


Accepting The Sky

by Biblio (Heyerchick)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Drama, First Time, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 19:05:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12966321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heyerchick/pseuds/Biblio
Summary: Title: 			Accepting The SkyAuthor: 		BiblioRating: 		NC-17Pairing: 		Jack and DanielCategory: 		Angst.  Drama.  First Time.  Romance.Date: 			14 April 2007Season/Spoilers: 	Late Season 2, set after "The Fifth Race" and "Holiday."Synopsis: 	Jack and Daniel are flung clear across the universe to an alien world where their only enemy is red tape.Notes: This story was previously only available as one of my Biblio's Philes, and is published on the web for the first time here at A03.





	Accepting The Sky

_"I saw a star, I reached for it, and I missed. So I accepted the sky."_ _Scott Fortini_

 

"Hey."

Daniel glanced up with a quick smile as Jack strolled unhurriedly into his lab.

"Is this the gizmo Carter was telling me about?" Jack asked curiously as he pulled a tall stool across to the lab bench, already stretching out inquisitive fingers as he sat down.

Daniel smoothly lifted the artefact out of reach, blandly ignoring Jack's indignant expression.  "Leave it alone, Jack," he instructed.  "It's a machine of some kind and we have no idea what it might do."

"According to Carter, it doesn’t do anything," Jack sniffed, pouting.

He liked toys.

"It hasn't done anything yet," Daniel countered. 

"Then how do you know it's a machine and not just a fancy paperweight?"

"It's emitting a low-level energy reading."

Jack looked unconvinced.

"We did find the artefact among Ma'chello's inventions," Daniel reminded him with some vehemence.  "Look how well those worked out for us."

"But didn't you steal this gizmo from Carter on the pretence that it's not like the other gizmos we found in Ma'chello's lab and that, on the balance of probability, the old bastard didn't rig it as some kind of booby trap?" Jack reminded Daniel in his very best approximation of a reasonable tone.

"We-ell..."

"Your objections would be a lot more convincing if you weren't cuddling the thing like a baby," Jack pointed out.

Slightly embarrassed, Daniel put the artefact back down on the bench between them. 

Jack promptly reached out to put both hands on it, pantomiming an outrageously exaggerated electric shock.

Daniel glared at him.

Nothing else happened.

It continued to not happen.

Daniel continued to glare.

Thwarted of entertainment, Jack eventually sat back, visibly disappointed.

"My interest is in the inscriptions," Daniel informed him a trifle coolly.  "If you'll look at them?"  He emphasised look. 

Jack interpreted this to mean touch. 

"You'll see the inscriptions are familiar."

Jack didn't see anything of the kind, even when he turned the artefact upside down then around and around.

"I think they're in the language of the Ancients," Daniel explained, although even he wasn't sure why he was taking the trouble.

"Ooo-kaaay," Jack drawled, prudently deciding to give up on aggravating Daniel for the moment.  An Ancient device had worked out about as well for him as Mach'ello's had for Daniel.  He put his always restless hands safely in his pockets.  "Can you read what it says?"

"I'm working on it."

"Which means no."

"Sam and the R&D team only declared the artefact safe and let me take it this morning," Daniel explained with dignity.

"So, basically, its function right now is to sit there and look decorative?" Perking up, Jack scented a new avenue of annoyance.  "Like, say, a paperweight?"

"It is beautiful," Daniel agreed quietly, his eyes tracing the soft, organic curves of delicately sculpted white metal surrounding a darkly golden opalescent sphere suspended in the centre. 

One of its mysteries was how the globe supported itself -- the encasing metal didn't touch it at any point.  The inscription flowed along the curves of metal, rising and falling in an intricate spiral. 

"I've only just determined where the writing starts," he murmured.  "Starts and stops.  It flows back on itself, ending exactly where it began, coming full circle.  It's fascinating."

"I'm glad you got something out of the old goat in the end," Jack said frankly.  "I know how much it was pissing you off Ma'chello stole your body and then it was Carter who got to play with all of his cool toys."

"Ma'chello was an engineer, not a historian," Daniel reminded Jack.  "I'm disturbed you think I was looking for some kind of payoff from his death."

"Not from his death, no.  Just from his attempt to take your life," Jack countered unsympathetically.  "And look how close he came to getting away with you."

"He was a very sad man," Daniel said quietly.  "And a desperately lonely one, with a brilliant mind and will trapped in a frail shell that was failing him.  For a short time I knew how terrible that was for him.  I guess I don't blame him for what he did to me so much as I pity him for what he did to himself."

"I almost got my head shaved by Teal'c, you know," Jack reminded Daniel tartly.  "Pity is a stretch."

"Then can you at least accept Ma'chello died knowing what -- and who -- he was fighting for all these years?  And that he believed his terrible losses worthwhile?" Daniel urged Jack to understand. "He lived my life long enough to connect with people again and to make peace with his own life.  I can be glad he was able to let go in the end."

"The old goat didn't let go!" Jack objected.  "Carter pried you out of his dying carcase."  He shook his head in despair.  "See?  Stuff like this is why you're the nice one." 

"Don't worry about it, Jack.  If my knees were as old and creaky as yours, I'd be crabby too," Daniel said sweetly.

"Old?"

"I've been inside you too, remember?"

Jack let out a muffled snort but refused to explain what was so funny.

"I'm not even starting on the state of your back," Daniel needled.

"It's glowing," Jack snapped, breaking in on Daniel's teasing with startling abruptness.

Daniel was thrown by the complete non-sequitur as much as the change in Jack's tone.

"This!" Jack stabbed a finger at the artefact.

Daniel straightened up, mirroring Jack's alarm as tiny points of light began to flare inside the golden sphere.  "Let's get Sam," he decided, grabbing for the phone.

"Let's!" Jack agreed emphatically, picking up the artefact and heading at speed for the hallway.  "Tell her to meet us in the gateroom."

"You're sending it through the gate?" Daniel confirmed, rapidly dialling Sam's lab.

"You bet your ass I am!  Remember what happened with the last shiny ball we brought... _OW_!" Jack howled, trying to throw down the now smoking sphere.

"Is it hot?"  Daniel dropped the unanswered phone and rushed to help Jack as he staggered.  "Are you hurt?" 

"Cold!" Jack ground out, clearly in pain.  "It's stuck to my skin.  I can't let go of it."

Daniel immediately punched out at the alarm to sound the base red alert, then took Jack's shaking hands in his to help steady the artefact and see what could be done to free him from it.

Two SFs burst into the lab at a dead run, their side-arms drawn.  Jack ordered them to get Captain Carter to the gateroom ASAP, and they put out an immediate alert over their radios before they took off to clear the way. 

With Daniel helping to support Jack, they headed as fast as they could towards the elevator while the machine's reaction intensified exponentially.

The dazzling golden flares now bursting from the sphere hurt the eyes and Daniel, battered by the unearthly staccato strobing, thought he saw the white-hot pricks of light begin to wheel.

"Oh, crap!" Jack breathed in horror as they pulled up short in front of the elevator doors.  He saw it too. 

The sphere was spinning inside its maze of metal, gaining tremendous momentum so rapidly, it appeared to be standing still but for the deepening whine of building energy and Jack's shuddering pain as the cold ate into his flesh.

The wheeling lights punched out, the concussion buckling the elevator doors in eerie, muffled silence.  The walls crumbled, the ceiling crumpled down and the floor fell away from them. 

They fell into searing light and cold, liquid and burning. 

Pulverised and blinded by light, unable to breathe, Daniel held on to Jack as hard as he held on to life, feeling only his stuttering heart and iron, gripping fingers.  He fought not to fail as pain splintered, cracking him open to strangling dark.

He fell clear.

Hit a hard surface from some height, debris showering down as his body heaved, his first choke of air bitter with bile as he vomited. 

He held on to Jack. 

Retched and groaned and wracked up his lungs. 

Held on to Jack.

His eyes were open long before his vision cleared.  He could move only so far he found Jack, found a feeble pulse, cradled him.

When Daniel could see, when he could see more than Jack's white face, he saw the sphere fall from Jack's raw, bloody hands and roll away, a burnt-out husk.  He saw a streak, a spattering of dirty, broken grey.  Concrete.  Walls and floor and ceiling ground down to dust.

Wavering, still feeling as if he was falling, Daniel sat huddled and tried to breathe, and he held on to Jack.

Everything was white.  White and light and silent.

He didn't know this place, he couldn't think, and the dark rose again to strangle him.

 

 

When Daniel opened his eyes, he saw sky above him.  Vividly clear and blue, shot through with streaking colour, the sky through glass.  He saw soft, organic curves of white metal framing the sky, then walls of creamy white stone figured with an abstract spiralling design his eyes couldn't follow.

Then he saw Jack sleeping in a bed nearby.

"Jack!" he called out anxiously, tumbling out of bed so fast his head swam.  He had to brace himself with a quick, unsteady hand thrown against the wall when he got tangled in the long white robe he'd been dressed in.  He realised his legs could hold him, that he was only weak, as Jack opened his eyes and looked all kinds of relieved to find him there.

"Jesus, Daniel!  Are you okay?" Jack snapped out urgently, sitting up to help him.  "What the hell happened?"

"Jack!  Your hands!" Daniel blurted out, stopping him.

Jack looked down blankly, then slowly held up his hands, fingers spread wide.  He was encased in a green gel-like substance from the tips of his fingers to his wrists.  They could see where the skin had been torn away by the sphere, but Jack was feeling no pain and he could move and use his hands enough to have pushed back the bedcovers.

"Where are we?" Jack demanded, an ugly look on his face.

"And who's here?  Who's been taking care of us?"

"I am here," a brisk female voice replied.

They turned quickly to find an older woman of average height, build and looks standing in a doorway that hadn't been there a minute ago.  She was dressed all in grey, wearing a short fitted jacket and a longish divided skirt, with a broad, artfully sculpted scarf draped formally around her shoulders.  Behind her was a taller, younger man whose equally formal uniform was clinical white.

"I am Advocate Afarin," the woman told them as she strode confidently into the room.  "And this is Healer Omid.  He has cared for you both since you were found injured and brought here from the World Below."

"What world?" Jack demanded.  "Who brought us here?"

"We will answer your questions as best we can, but first you will allow me?"  The healer came straight across to Jack, who suffered the man to carefully check the ugly wounds on each of his hands.  "The mehry..."  Omid delicately touched the encasing green gel in explanation.  "This will be absorbed into the skin over time as the injury heals.  You will need the ministrations of a Healer only if you begin to feel pain."

Jack nodded curt understanding, if not gratitude.

"Your wounds did not threaten your lives," Omid told them reassuringly.  "All the injuries you sustained have been repaired, as you see."  He released Jack's hands.  "But you must know we were unable to rouse you from coma from the time you were found until now.  As your condition was otherwise stable, I judged it best you be allowed to wake naturally.  Be assured we have watched over you, tended to all your needs while you have been in our care."  His smile encompassed them both.  "You are safe and well, I promise you."

"And you?" Jack challenged the woman Afarin, the natural authority figure of the two, not trusting anything he was seeing or hearing.  "What do you promise?"

"I have been sent by the Arbiters, the authorities of our world, to be of help to you both at this most difficult time," Afarin replied with calm composure.  "From the markings on your clothing, we know you to be O'Neill and Jackson.  I will address you as such if I may?"  

She smiled at them as she sat down in a low, sinuous chair near to their beds while the healer stayed watchfully close to Daniel and Jack. 

"To answer the first of your questions, O'Neill, this world is Shonagon.  It is in the Erias Galaxy."

"Never heard of it," Jack snapped.

"We don't know it," Daniel replied dazedly, fumbling behind him until he found the edge of his bed and slumped down on it.  "We're from a planet called Earth.  That's in what we call the Milky Way -- our galaxy."

"We do not know your world either, only that you were brought to ours by means of a device we believed lost long ago," Afarin informed them.  "We did not even know the name to call your world until you spoke it just now, Jackson."

"We only have your word for that," Jack said coldly.  "Prove it."

"I will try, O'Neill," Afarin replied.  "May I tell you what has been learned of your plight so far?"

"Please," Jack snapped.  He was simmering with hostility, a barely contained aggression Afarin and the healer carefully noted but didn't for now address. 

Daniel thought Jack must be even more acutely conscious of their ignorance and vulnerability than he was.  Secure in the SGC, they hadn't even been armed when they were taken by the device. 

Jack  _hated_  helplessness. 

"And we want our stuff back," he demanded.  "Now."

"You are in the quarantine facility of Khousheh Spaceport," the healer Omid explained quickly.  "That is for your protection and for ours."

"Very convenient.  For you," Jack commented.

The healer was dismayed by his attitude but persevered in trying to reassure him of their good intent. 

"While you were unconscious, you received the vaccinations that will enable you to live safely among the Shon -- our people."  Omid looked slightly apologetic for this.  "Though you were unable to give consent, protection against sickness and disease is both a legal and medical requirement for entry to our world and no exception can be made.  You experienced no ill-effects from the treatment.  Your physiology is so close to our own, no harm will come to you from the vaccines." 

"And what other 'treatment' have you given us while we were unconscious?" Jack asked dangerously.

"Hydration, nutrition, care for your wounds and physical well-being -- any non-invasive, palliative treatment that might aid in your healing and help you to awaken sooner."

"We understand the shock this must be for you, the alarm you must feel," Afarin intervened, seeing these assurances were not having the desired effect on Jack.  "Please believe me when I tell you this is not an isolated world and you need not fear to be thought alien among us," she  promised.  "We trade freely with hundreds of planets in dozens of star systems, near and far.  I assure you that you are not prisoners here and no harm is intended towards you."

"Prove it," Jack challenged her again.

"You may leave this facility whenever you choose," Omid assured him gravely.  "I give you my word, O'Neill.  The entrance to this room is only closed for your privacy.  It is not locked." 

Jack took him at his word, prowling over to the wall the two Shon had come through.  As it had for them, the wall slid smoothly aside at his approach.

"There are no guards, O'Neill," Omid encouraged him.

Jack went out to check this for himself.

" _Live_  among you?" Daniel asked Afarin in frank dismay.

Afarin looked troubled.  "I have said we do not know the world you came from and that is the truth of it, Jackson.  We do not know how to send you back or even where to send you to."

Struggling to take all this in, Daniel roughly scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to wake himself up a bit.  The healer poured some cool water into a bowl and brought it across so he could wash his face, automatically murmuring grateful platitudes to the man.

"It has taken our scientists days to find what little we do know of the device that brought you here," Omid explained compassionately, understanding this would be a blow. 

"Days?" Daniel echoed hollowly.

"You were comatose when we found you in the World Below," Omid reminded him.  "Our scientists have deduced that your bodies could not withstand the shock of transportation.  In fact, the device we think brought you here was not meant for you.  We believe it was keyed to activate and to transport safely only when handled by one of the Ancients, our Ancestors."

"I hate to break it to you, but someone screwed up," Jack broke in bitterly from the hallway.  "We almost died."

"The device was not entirely mistaken.  It has been determined that you, O'Neill, carry much of the Ancient code of life within you."  Omid touched a device attached to his wrist and a vivid three-dimensional image appeared in the air between them.  "This is the Portal -- the great core of Shon science, history, knowledge and culture, all that we have learned as a people, shared freely by all of our people."

"DNA?" Daniel recognised the image being displayed.  "Jack has Ancient DNA?"

"All humans share the Ancient code of life, some to a greater degree than others," Omid replied composedly.  "The Ancients were the first evolution of this form.  We are the second evolution."

"Humans," Daniel said eagerly.

"Humans of your world and the Shon of this world, we are one people," Omid confirmed, smiling at Daniel's quick understanding.  "There are but minute differences in the evolution of Shon and your... Earth, is it?...physiology."

"So, when Jack touched the device, it mistakenly identified him as an Ancient and transported him -- us -- here?" Daniel queried.

"Why?" Jack interjected in a hard voice.

Advocate Afarin looked embarrassed.  "You must understand Shonagon was not always so great and bountiful as it is now.  Tens of thousands of years ago, Guide Zinat -- leader of all Shon in her time -- burned to know the secrets of our Ancestors, who had moved on from our galaxy to seed life in another countless ages before."

"So Zinat set a trap," Daniel said slowly.  "To capture an Ancient and bring them here."

"Without hope of escape or return, aye," Afarin agreed, seeming grateful he was being so reasonable.

"Don’t be so sure of that," Jack grated.  "I want to see the place we were 'found' by your people."

"You were found by a class of children and their teacher from the primary school here in Khousheh," Afarin said tartly.  "They were touring the Guide Zinat's palace close by in the World Below and heard the debris falling in the chamber where you appeared."

"A class trip?" Daniel blinked, thrown by the mundane explanation.

"You can interview the children if you wish to determine the veracity of their account, O'Neill, but they are rather small and more easily frightened than me," Afarin offered sarcastically. 

"I still want to see it," Jack insisted stubbornly.

"It will be done," Omid agreed with good grace.  "Have I not given my word you are not prisoners here?"

"Now," Jack demanded.  "If it's close by like you said, take us there now."

Afarin looked to the healer for guidance.

"I will accompany you," Omid decided.  "I believe you are both physically strong enough to transport to the World Below but I would like to be with you in case I should be needed."

"What do you mean by 'World Below'?" Daniel queried.

"In the days of Guide Zinat, the Shon lived on the land below," Afarin answered willingly enough.  "We near destroyed it with our greed and industry."

"Both the land and the water were poisoned for many generations," Omid confessed.  "It was only when all seemed truly lost the Shon found their way, turning all of their energies to healing land and people, building anew."

Afarin beamed.  "Our people live here in the World Above now, in clean cities and sweet skies while every living thing grows and is tended in the World Below."

"Cut the New Age touchy-feely crap!" Jack snarled, goaded by their complete inability to grasp the urgency of the situation.  "I just want you to send us back where we came from!"

"We cannot, O'Neill," Omid said heavily.  "But we will take you to the World Below as you have asked so you may see the truth of it for yourself." 

He went out into the hallway, called out a couple of names, and two bored young men came in with fresh robes along with the cleaned and pressed BDUs.  The two handed over socks, boots and everything Daniel and Jack been carrying when they were transported, including a banana power bar Jack had been hoarding, a few sticks of gum, a laundered handkerchief and Daniel's glasses.

Omid and Afarin went out of the room with the orderlies, giving Daniel and Jack some privacy while they quickly dressed, Daniel helping Jack when his hands failed him.

"Do you believe them?" Daniel asked quietly.

"Right now, I don't know what to believe," Jack replied in a low voice, coming closer to Daniel.  "When I went out before, there were no guards, just like Omid said.  No one challenged me.  No one even noticed me.  It looks just like any hospital I've ever been in.  Patients in beds, visitors, people waiting, nurses..."

"In other words, their behaviour and this environment is consistent with who and what they say they are." 

Daniel was hardly prepared for that to be true.  He would almost have felt better if Afarin and Omid been caught in a lie because that would have meant the rest of it was also a lie.

"I don't think we're in any immediate danger, put it that way," Jack said dryly.  He paused, then grimaced and laid it on the line.  "It may be the damage has already been done." 

This was the closest either of them had come to admitting they might in fact be stranded here.

Restless and angry, Jack went to look through the high arching windows, with Daniel right behind him. 

The light was almost too strong for Daniel, but he could make out the glint of metal, smooth arcs of white metal, the walls of city levels opening out below them, tier upon tier reflecting back the sun. 

Jack watched the movement of the blurred clouds far below and told Daniel with astonished admiration they must be in this planet's stratosphere.

"You will see spacecraft entering the port," Afarin pointed out, hovering in the now open doorway.

"The hospital is on the uppermost level of Khousheh so all of our patients might benefit from the sunlight," Omid added, proud of his domain.  "Will you come with us now?" he asked respectfully, beckoning for them to join him.

When they went out, Daniel found the hallway to be just as pristine and ornate as their hospital room, with bright sunshine streaming in through the windows in the patients' rooms and out of the many open doors.  The hospital bustle, the people in white, the hushed families and partners in the waiting rooms, the flowers, even the dimensions of the elevator, were all quite familiar. 

There was nothing to suggest a hoax of some kind, no sour notes among the friendly, open faces Daniel saw around him as people got on and off the elevator car.  Not even a point to such a hoax that he could see.  He and Jack just weren't that important.  Certainly not important enough to build and populate this impressive facility.

The transport centre in the lower part of the spaceport proved to be nothing more sinister than an airy, hi-tech airport-style terminus with neat squares of those low stone seats, plenty of light and greenery.  Several smiling uniformed attendants were boarding the dozen or so passengers waiting in line, all of them relaxed and chatty, in vivid, casual clothing.

Tourists.

Even Jack's scepticism was dented by a very small child in a very large sunhat bouncing up and down with a brightly coloured beach pail and shovel clasped excitedly to her chest. 

"We're near the ocean?" he asked dryly.

"Zinat's palace is on the shore of the Shariar Sea," Afarin confirmed pleasantly, relieved Jack was showing some faint signs of thaw.  "It will take less time to reach the World Below than it did to reach the transport," she added as they got closer to the front of the line.

When their turn came to board, they walked onto what looked like an unusually plush and luxurious plane, albeit a small one.  As each passenger took their seat, something like a sleek roller coaster harness dropped down, moulded to their shape and secured them for the trip down. 

It was impossible for them to balk at the restraint when even the bouncy child was settling down happily.

"This is ridiculous," Jack growled in Daniel's direction when the girl noticed him watching and waved her little shovel at him. 

He was then stricken to silence when a couple of sportily dressed women got on with their dogs.  The women strolled to the rear of the transport, where the dogs each bounded into a carrier without fuss, as if they'd done it a thousand times before.  The animals' evident comfort with the procedure, the surroundings of the transport, hit Jack harder than anything else had.  He knew dogs.

Afarin and Omid, sitting across from them, watched anxiously as they reacted to the hatch being sealed, the usual pre-flight safety spiel everyone everywhere tuned out, the pilot thanking them for joining her on this flight, and then a heart-stopping drop straight down. 

They felt nothing, not even the hum of the engine.

They were crashing straight down. 

Daniel could see they were crashing, plummeting out of the sky.  If not for the chatter and laughter around them, the obliviousness of their fellow passengers, he could have happily freaked. 

When he closed his eyes, he felt better.  He felt nothing. 

It was only when he could see he understood they were falling.

"Holy Christ," Jack breathed as they touched down, lightly as a feather.  "The Joint Chiefs would kill for a vertical take-off plane like this."

There was nothing Daniel could say to this.  He didn't try.  His mind blank, he got in line with the tourists, the kids and the dog walkers, following them through the equally high-tech, airy surface transport centre and out into a lush, landscaped park drenched in tropical flowers, their colour startling after the white World Above.

"Guide Zinat's palace." Afarin proudly pointed out a long, low structure with golden domes topping slender, graceful towers tiled in blue-green shades similar to the shining sea framing it.

"The place I saw," Daniel recalled with an effort.  "Before I passed out.  It was white.  Very light."

"The far tower of the palace," Omid supplied, consulting the Portal device at his wrist for confirmation.  "You were found in the chamber directly beneath the dome, surrounded by debris from the structure you were in when the device activated."

"It was destroyed," Daniel carefully filled in the blanks for Jack, who hadn't been conscious for any of this.  "I watched it roll out of your hands and burn away into nothing."

"Our scientists had to theorise based on the manner of your arrival," Omid agreed, grateful for Daniel's corroboration.  "The delkash was the only device from antiquity they could identify as being capable of such a transportation.  Without physical evidence, of course, they were unable to confirm their findings."

"Very convenient," Jack said sarcastically.

"Not for the scientists," Omid replied.  "Or ultimately for you.  If anything of the delkash had remained, it could have been studied, perhaps rebuilt.  It might in time have even been possible to reverse its trajectory and return you to your home world."

There was nothing they could say to that.  It wasn't a road open to them.

Understanding his issues with trust, the healer let Jack lead them through the park, choosing his own path to the palace.  Jack twisted and turned, crossed their path in an unexpected reversal a time or two, but it didn't change the cosy domesticity of people picnicking, napping, necking, at play with small children or tossing balls for lively pets.

The closer they came to the palace, the more disoriented and reluctant Daniel felt.  That they weren't in danger was hardly relevant.  He thought with more and more certainty it was only circumstance they were fighting.  A stupid accident that had left them in what could be the worst predicament of their lives.

The cool interior of the palace was tiled in colours as rich and gorgeous as the outside, perfectly preserved for all the age Omid and Afarin claimed for it.  The vast entrance chamber was circular, the walls soaring to the height of several floors.  An information desk was set in its centre, staffed by more smiling attendants. 

Daniel had to swallow down the salt taste of sudden nausea when he saw what looked to be a gift shop.

This was like the entrance to any major museum in the world. 

Only, this was not his world.

He followed where he was led, the furniture, the fine arts, the décor, the mosaics and textiles -- all these were stunning, the collection a triumph. 

Daniel saw it all but took nothing in, understood nothing he was seeing until they were in a white chamber, cool and light and silent, barred by a heavy, scarred door.

He stood still while Jack walked around in a slow circuit of the entire space, conducting a sharp-eyed inspection of any possible anomaly in the smooth white tile that could hide surveillance equipment. 

Something.

The only thing Daniel could see was a furious Jack getting more frustrated with every step. 

He began in time to feel enough like himself to deduce the lack of inscriptions or other identifying marks and features was deliberate.  He felt that if the Ancients were technologically sophisticated enough to not only master inter-galactic space travel but build the network of Stargates while humanity was just an itch in their genetics lab, then the predatory Shon Guides of old were hardly going to hand an Ancient prisoner any tool or information that might let them orient themselves or find a way home.

If there was a way home for them, it wasn't here.  He felt it.  They needed other options.

"Do you have a pen and paper, something I can write with?" he asked.

Afarin eyed him strangely, then touched the device at her wrist to activate the Portal in the same way Omid had in the hospital.  "Tell the Portal to accept input and then speak," she instructed, as if to a child.  "Your words will be recorded."

"I need to draw something for you," Daniel explained, his mind working furiously.

Jack came back to him, nodding terse permission to take this where he needed to.

"Accept input, two-dimensional visual representation," Omid told the Portal.

Daniel touched the shimmering, framed 'nothing' of the Portal screen cautiously and found it surprisingly solid, like a sort of hard light.  Carefully, he sketched out the shape of the Stargate for Afarin and the healer, including approximations of the chevrons. 

"Do you have one of these?" he asked them intently.

"Search and retrieve image matches," Omid ordered the Portal.

The visual display shifted, launching a second screen in front of Daniel's sketch.  A series of images flashed on screen almost too quickly for their eyes to follow, then several were selected and thumbnails displayed.

One of them was for what looked like a Danish pastry.

"I need to sit down," Daniel said faintly, waving the concerned healer off, utterly horrified a civilisation with this level of technology and so much preserved of their long history had no record of the Stargate.  It hardly seemed possible to him that if they knew so much about the Ancients, their Ancestors, they wouldn't recognise the significance of the gate technology. 

It could only mean there was no Stargate on Shonagon. 

"What is this device you have drawn?" Omid asked curiously, closely inspecting Daniel's illustration of the gate on the Portal screen.

"It's called a Stargate.  It's a transportation device we believe was designed by the Ancients."  Daniel's lips felt numb.   "If there's no Stargate on Shonagon, what about other places?  You spoke of hundreds of planets, dozens of star systems."

"Had such a device been seen on any of the explored worlds in our galaxy, the image would have been among those displayed by the Portal, Jackson," Afarin said apologetically, as acutely aware as Omid she wasn't telling them anything they wanted to hear.  "You heard our instructions to the Portal.  I did not restrict the search to Shonagon alone."

Daniel thought then it was possible the Ancients had colonised this galaxy and moved on before they'd developed the gate technology. 

"What about establishing the location of Earth in relation to Shonagon?" he changed his avenue of attack.  "Just because you call your galaxy Erias and we call ours the Milky Way doesn't mean it's not the same galaxy.  What if we were to sketch out the solar system we come from for the Portal?  If you trade with all these other worlds, you must have star charts, right?"  He looked at them hopefully.  "Charts we can search for the same configuration of planets as our solar system?"

"We can but try, Jackson," Afarin agreed without hesitation.

Jack, Air Force-educated engineer, pilot and amateur astronomer, for once didn't bullshit.  He stepped up to the Portal device and requested Afarin and Omid's help in setting up a scale grid.  Taking his time over it, he sketched a surprisingly detailed and carefully proportioned representation of Earth's solar system. 

"It's reasonably accurate," he said shortly when he was done. "The best I can do from memory."

Omid obligingly began the Portal search and they all watched closely as star maps flickered on and off the display for comparison against the sketch almost faster than their eyes could follow.  The strobe effect reminded Daniel unpleasantly of the disastrous dalkesh transportation device and he had to turn away in the end, a real headache building behind his eyes.

"Goddammit!" Jack yelled out suddenly behind him, his frustration a lash.  "That's everything?" he demanded furiously.

"All the star systems in our galaxy, whether explored or merely observed.  We have mapped it all in the detail you have seen on the Portal," Omid tried to pacify him.  "I do not believe it is possible your Earth is part of our galaxy or that our galaxy is also yours, O'Neill."

Daniel tried hard not to slump tiredly as yet another barrier was slammed up in their way.  Disappointment piling on disappointment, already way beyond overkill.  He was starting to appreciate Jack's feeling that circumstance was mocking them.

"Khousheh is a spaceport, right?" Jack moved rapidly on, refusing to give in to it.  "A spaceport means space ships."

"The Shon have many ships," Afarin admitted equably.  "But even if one could be found to take you from this galaxy to another, and even if the galaxy nearest our own is the one you came from, it would take more than one hundred years to reach through space and there is not credit enough in all the world to pay a Pilot for the undertaking."

"I find that hard to believe," Jack noted, eyeing the advanced information Portal meaningfully.

"This is the reason," Afarin said simply.  "This and many other devices like it.  The Shon are an old people, O'Neill.  We have travelled far and learned many secrets, and found the greatest of them to be this: that all of our people are equal and that poverty, hunger, war, disease, crime and ignorance are truly abhorrent, intolerable to our society."

She was preaching to the choir where Omid was concerned.  "We have worked diligently these many centuries, devoting all of our resources to eradicating these evils from Shonagon."

"And you've succeeded?" Jack asked sceptically.

"We have."  Afarin bowed her head proudly.  "Not one among us lives high and lordly in slothful ease from the labour of others, as was true in the days of Guide Zinat and her like."

"I'm not interested in how you live!" Jack said sharply.  "Only in how you can help us.  If you don't have a ship capable of transporting us home then maybe you can put us in contact with someone who does.  If this Portal of yours has information about the Ancients, then maybe there's some record of the Asgard and our new buddy Thor."

Afarin dutifully instructed the Portal to search, first for the Asgard and then for any reference to Thor. 

Both of these searches failed but now Daniel was refusing to give in, coming up to the Portal to sketch out the distinctive head shape and features of the Asgard Supreme Commander who'd identified himself as the Norse god Thor in the Hall of Might on Cimmeria.  He ran through the Norse pantheon, the major Goa'uld system lords, even tried variations on Ma'chello's name since the device was found among his inventions.

He got nothing.

"Is this everything?" he asked Afarin, as unable to admit defeat as Jack was.  "Are there no other records of your history than the Portal?"

"There are documents, fragments from antiquity," Afarin replied doubtfully.  "Our scientists work to transfer the content of those to the Portal for the benefit of all, but the work is not wholly complete.  I will enquire about these things you wish to know."

"On all the other worlds too?  The ones you trade with?" Jack demanded.

"It will take time," Afarin cautioned, not exactly reluctant to put a search in motion.  Not exactly.  Only in assuming her blandly neutral professional mask, she couldn't hide from them she was going through the motions believing it was an utter waste of her time.  And the much more amenable Omid agreed with her assessment.

"You won't help us," Daniel said a little desperately, hardly able to comprehend the magnitude of what was happening to them.

"On the contrary!" Afarin was shocked and somewhat offended by this.  "I am your Advocate, Jackson," she reminded him.  "Though we are not in law liable for the actions of a device created so long ago and in such secrecy its existence was not remembered until it brought you to us, we will not leave you in need."

Jack's sudden crack of harsh laughter at the supreme irony of this brought a flush to Afarin's cheeks, but she was determined to help them whether they wanted it or not.

"An Arbiter has ruled on this matter," she told them solemnly.  "What skills and knowledge you bring with you from your world, we will honour here.  You will have credit."

"Um...credit?" Daniel probed cautiously.  "You've mentioned that a couple of times now.  The term probably carries a different meaning for us than it does for you.  Could you explain it for us?"

"Credit," she replied slowly, choosing her words carefully to get across to them this essential of life on Shonagon.  "Like any other Shon, I have a comfortable home, I have food and heat, light and water, clothing.  I may travel the World Above or the World Below, access the Portal freely, be entertained by my fellows, seek companionship or sporting challenge." 

She glanced enquiringly at each of them in turn, and was gratified by their ready comprehension.  Her face brightened. 

"In return for my share in the bounty of Shonagon, my credit, I offer my services as Advocate," she said more confidently.  "There are those among us not capable of work through some illness or incapacity our Healers have not yet mastered, those who cannot learn as well as they might, those who suffer the loss of loved ones.  Such misfortune might befall any of us."

"You're a social worker!" Jack barked incredulously, as if she was mocking him. 

"If I follow your meaning, then aye.  An Advocate is much like your social worker.  What did you expect, O'Neill?" Afarin asked with some amusement, exchanging a quick, rueful glance with Omid.  "The Guide himself?"

"Space exploration is relatively new to our people."  Daniel rubbed his eyes tiredly, aware of a crashing headache building.  "Your arrival on our world would bring our President -- our leader -- to meet you.  It would be very special to us."

"I am sorry, Jackson," Omid replied kindly.  "It is not the same here.  You have but to descend to the lower levels of Khousheh port to see that with your own eyes.  We trade every hour of every day with the citizens of many other worlds, all of them in my care while in Khousheh."

"We're stranded," Daniel admitted finally, in a voice hardly sounding like his own.

"Maybe so, Jackson, but we will not leave you in need," Afarin promised them again, as if the constant repetition might make it mean something to them.  "Tell me your skills and I will see what might be done for you."

"I'm a scholar, a historian," Daniel recited wearily.  "I study the past; the languages, histories and cultures of the long-dead peoples of our world."  He hesitated, thinking about the irony of his vocation.  It felt useless to him now.  "Languages you don't speak, histories you don't know."  It hurt to even think this.

"Knowledge is never wasted," Afarin retorted sharply, a gleam in her eye.  "You may continue with your studies, Jackson.  Now you will learn of our past and you may yet find the information you seek about these Asgard of yours.  Aye.  It will do."  She nodded in calm satisfaction.  "The old library still stands in Nadereh and there are not near enough Shon who will work with paper and in the old ways when the Portal answers all need.  Go there and you may see the oldest records of our people.  It will do well." 

She turned smiling to Jack.  "And you, O'Neill?  How will you earn your credit?"

Jack had to take a breath, a deep, long, steadying breath, before he could answer her.  His veneer of calm control was barely skin-deep.  "I'm a soldier," he explained with slow precision.  "But you already said you have no war.  I'm also a pilot."

"A Pilot!" Afarin exclaimed eagerly. 

"We can never have enough of those in the World Above!" Omid enthused.

Afarin's fingers flew over the Portal interface, data spooling rapidly down its screen.  "Benahm!" she gloated.  "Pilots are needed in Benahm.  It is a newly constructed community and I can easily..."

"No!" Jack's glacial tone silenced her.  "We stay together.  If we're stranded here, if we have no choice in that, then at the very least where he goes, I go."

"I cannot fault you for that, O'Neill," Afarin admitted with surprising tolerance.  "You and Jackson are alone and far from home.  As I have said, Pilots are wanted everywhere in the World Above.  If the two of you will pool your credit, I will be able to place you together far more easily into a dwelling in Nadereh.  There are few Shon who will willingly live alone, so suitable dwellings are few and far between." 

"We'll pool our credit," Jack declared for both of them.

Daniel could scarcely hide his relief.

Afarin issued a series of instructions to the Portal and then Omid asked Jack and Daniel to stand in front of the screen, keeping their eyes open.  The healer took a retinal scan while Afarin explained this was all that was required for them to access the Portal themselves or to complete any transaction for goods and services with another Shon.

Daniel wondered crazily if this meant they could hit the gift shop on their way out, get a souvenir.

"Will you take us back?" he asked wearily.  "Please."

Jack looked as if he would argue until he caught sight of Daniel's face.  Then he clammed up and stalked out of the room so rigid, so tense, he could hit out at anybody.

For once, Daniel let this go without comment. 

He was hardly in a better state of mind himself, taking the shiny, happy people having fun in the park almost as personally as Jack was.

He'd never been so disoriented.  This was all looking and feeling so familiar, so close to home, when in truth, it could not be further away.

However vital the information she had to impart to them, Afarin had the good sense not to continue her lecture, at least until they were safely strapped into their seats on the transport back up to Khousheh. 

Maybe she thought talking incessantly at them would take their minds off crashing upwards.

"If you are to pool your credit, it is important you understand it is shared between you," she warned them.  "What one of you spends, the other may not.  I do not know how your world works, but here all citizens contribute to the good of their communities in the best way they can.  There is no material lack or individual need the community cannot meet, but there is no profit or surplus to be made.  Our justice is social -- it is equality for all." 

Afarin's face shone with pride. 

Whatever else Daniel and Jack doubted, her commitment to these ideals was tangible.  Her evangelism was exhausting them, although Afarin seemed to believe she was leading them back into the spaceport on some sort of high.

"I advise most strongly that you think not of yourself, but of all," she warned.  "It is in this spirit Arbiter Kaveh has ruled that reparation be made by the Shon in recognition of your loss of home and people.   Your dwelling will be furnished and equipped, clothing and all needs provided for.  And you, O'Neill, will be given your fluyt." 

She had an excited kid-at-Christmas expression on her face Daniel didn't have the mental energy to try to translate, let alone respond to.

"My what?"  Jack repeated the word as Afarin had pronounced it.  "Flight?"

"Your fluyt -- your craft.  You may contract with other Shon to sail people and goods to any port in the World Above." 

As the transport docked and the restraints were released, Afarin stood to bow formally to each of them in turn. 

"It is my honour to be your Advocate, O'Neill and Jackson.  I am pleased to help you."

Daniel was astonished Jack didn't kill her where she stood.

"You will rest now and eat."  Back on his own turf, the healer Omid finally, mercifully terminated the advocate's relentless, essential information dump.

Afarin approved.  "I will return in the forenoon to take you to your new home on Nadereh."

"Thank you," Daniel said gravely, appreciating the honesty of her efforts on their behalf even though he wanted to put his head down and howl.  "I have so many questions," he admitted helplessly.

"The Portal is now keyed to you," Afarin answered reassuringly.  "Be patient a little longer, Jackson.  When you reach your dwelling in Nadereh, you will have the answer to any question you might ask.  Your supervisor in the Great Library will be Roshak.  He will be pleased to have your support, for he is old and frail, and stubborn about the books.  Be assured what help and advice Roshak can give, he will offer up freely to you."

"The only answer I want is what it will take for you people to accept responsibility for what you've done to us and get us back home," Jack said icily.

Afarin looked back at him steadily, unmoved by his scorn.  "The Shon are not the gods of old, O'Neill.  We cannot magic what we need into being.  I have told you no one among us is left in want, but at the same time, no one lives in excess, not even the Guide himself.  It takes the work of us all to keep it so.  We are all of us in service to the Shon," she told them with quiet conviction.  "Even you.  We did not bring you to our world but we have done all that is in our power to do for you now you are here."

"More even than would be done for most Shon," Omid suggested.  "We are a people long accustomed to looking to our own resources, making our own way through life."

"There is not a Pilot alive who was given his fluyt," Afarin agreed.  "The credit of a whole city must be pooled to buy in the services of a new Pilot and craft just as if the community had elected to build another school or hospital, to appoint new Teachers, Advocates, Arbiters, Healers or any other public servant.  You will not go to Benahm, O'Neill, so the people living there lose because of it."

Jack eyed her stonily.  "Answer the question."

"Aye, we could build a ship that would take you home if we knew where your home was, but Shon would starve to do it.   How many would you have us put in need to satisfy you, O'Neill? Were you not raised up to believe every choice brings with it consequences?"

"Yes," Daniel said quickly, before Jack could alienate her further.  "Yes, we were.  I'm sorry, Afarin.  You have to understand we weren't prepared for this to happen to us and it's going to take us time to adjust."  If that was even possible.  "We don't know your world or your people, the rules and expectations of your society or even how your economy -- your system of credit works.  We're going to make mistakes."

Afarin relaxed, smiling at Daniel.  "We are none of us perfect, Jackson."

"Rest now," Omid advised them kindly, shepherding them over to the elevator leading up to the hospital and what Daniel was frightened to think of as the sanctuary of their room. 

"I'm sure it is of small comfort to you, but for what little it is worth, I am sorry for what has happened to you, O'Neill and Jackson," Omid said as he took them back to where they'd started.  "If it was in my power to undo?"  He shrugged helplessly.  "But it is not.  I can only advise this: eat, rest and recover your strength."  He paused at the door to their room and addressed himself particularly to Jack.  "This is not your prison, O'Neill.  You may leave at any time, go anywhere on Khousheh you desire."

"Without resources, without the means to support ourselves, we aren't going anywhere but where you send us," Jack retorted icily, unmoved by the man's sympathy.  It was useless to them.

Shattered by information overload, Daniel walked straight over to the windows and lay down on a bed, realising his hands were shaking. 

"My god, Jack," he whispered.  "Our  _lives_."

Jack sat on the bed beside Daniel, muscling into him until he slid over to make room for him to swing up his legs and make himself at home. 

When Jack's hand came to rest in Daniel's hair, he felt his eyes sting and had to blink away a terrible urge to cry.  He'd never felt so beaten. 

"What are we going to do?"

"You're going to be some kind of librarian and I'm going to be the Shon version of a teamster.  Or is that a cab driver?"

"What about our friends?" Daniel asked disbelievingly.  "Sam and Teal'c, General Hammond?  Fraiser?  Everything we were building at the SGC?" 

There were so many implications, so many problems, he hardly knew where to begin to work it all through.  Except that they were lost.  Completely lost and alone.

"The device generated an energy field around us, Jack, that's what the light was," he surmised.  "It took out the walls, the floor -- everything around us in a perfect circle.  All our friends will think we're dead." 

Daniel could hardly articulate the unbearable thought. 

"What about Sha'uri?  And Skaara?  How do I find my wife?"

"You don't," Jack stated, brutal in his pragmatism.  "They're gone.  It's all gone.  We're here, we're alone and I believe -- I believe now we can't get back to them.  We can't undo it.  It's  _done_.  It's better we're dead to them.  They'll mourn us and then they'll move on.  Better that than eating their hearts out over an impossible rescue."

"You sound so calm about it!" Daniel accused him almost angrily.

"Calm?" Jack said in low, hard voice, his hand moving restlessly over Daniel's hair.  "I'm not calm.  It burns me there are no answers, no way out," he argued intensely.  "And you want to know what burns me most?"

"Tell me," Daniel encouraged him gently, already regretting his sharpness.  This was no one's fault.  It was only a stupid, devastating accident they were never going to recover from.  Their lives -- their dreams -- would never be the same.

"Afarin is right," Jack said stonily.  "In fact, she's dead on the money if only she knew it.  The Shon are going to do a whole helluva lot more for us than we would ever do for the unwanted human flotsam continually washing up on  _our_ shores."

"If it's any help, I believe Afarin and Omid too," Daniel offered, fighting the numb heaviness that closed his throat and spread to swamp his chest.  "I can't see what they'd have to gain from lying to us."

Jack hitched along the bed and lay down with Daniel, pulling him into an embrace he gratefully returned. 

He was cold and trembling, understood he was in shock.  It seemed impossible to him there was nothing to be done, no answers to their questions, that they were so terribly small and unimportant in the scheme of things on this alien world they had no chance of appeal or reprieve. 

It was too soon to even conceive of acceptance, but they had no choice but to try to live this life.  No choice at all. 

There wasn't even anyone to fight. 

It was just the system, swallowing them up.

So long as Jack was with him, Daniel felt he could be strong enough to do this.  He told himself that. 

He told himself again and again. 

He tried hard to believe it.

They didn't talk for a long while.  They held on to each other through the first rush of fury and denial, through the bitterness and the fear.

They held on.

 

 

If Jack was looking for confirmation of what Omid and Afarin had told them, what the advocate intended for them, he got plenty on the swooping glass elevator ride down to the domestic docks.  It was a long, slow ride with busy, hustling people getting in and out on most levels.  He and Daniel didn't really draw a second glance from anyone, despite their distinctive BDUs.  They were nothing out of the ordinary, wearing a uniform that was only one among many.

Daniel was looking out the window, trying to see everything that could be seen, trying desperately to get a feel for the place and the people, to find some good in them.  He was already thinking about all the ways it could have been worse for them and getting annoyed with himself because of it. 

In all the time Jack had known him, Daniel had never really embraced the concepts of defeat or surrender; do or die was more his speed.  He had no idea what to do with himself in a world that hemmed him in on all sides for safety and demanded a mere pedestrian pace.  For his own good, of course.

Jack could only be glad it hadn’t crossed Daniel's mind to blame him for this.  He was the one who'd been fooling around with the damned device, trying to make a point of some kind, although he couldn't for the life of him remember what. 

Except...

Okay, it was fun to get on Daniel's nerves, to have all that indignant, sparking attention drilling down on him.  He couldn’t resist the teasing and the aggravation, then charming and coaxing Daniel out of the sulks and into a smile. 

He loved all of Daniel's moods. 

He loved to see all the ways and all the many deepening levels he could affect Daniel on. 

He loved Daniel.

If Jack wasn't military, if he didn't buy into it so completely, and if Daniel didn’t believe he was still married or buy into  _Jack_  so completely, Jack would have him.

The only reason he wasn't going insane right now was Daniel. 

The walls of a cage were slamming down around them, making their lives small and ordinary.  Alien, Jack acknowledged, but Jesus, the suburbs were the suburbs, whatever galaxy you were in.  Life didn't get smaller.  They'd been flung from exploring the universe to stacking books and driving cabs for a living. 

For credit. 

And from the outset, they knew they'd never do more than get by.  They'd be, god help them, 'comfortable'.  That was how it worked here. 

For all the options, the hopes and expectations being closed off to them, Jack could see one chance opening to him.  Out of the ruin of their lives came the chance to be with Daniel and to love him, to live with him and maybe, some day, to make love with him.  He'd never expected, never imagined having that.  Never imagined what he was and what he did could ever be cut clear of who he was, the dead weight of all his years of service, rank and responsibility excised.  That he would ever be free of his commitment to the Air Force, free to  _choose_.

He was torn, he'd been torn for about as long as he'd known Daniel Jackson, but Jack was still holding on to this as tightly as Daniel was holding on to him. 

It was having Jack with him that was giving Daniel the strength to square off against this nightmare and Jack was not about to let him down, no matter what came of it.  He had no option but to hold on too, keep it together, hang on to his control and throttle his temper when he felt like ripping apart.  Daniel had so much faith in him, such an open, unstinting trust, Jack shouldered the responsibility for protecting him without hesitation or real regret.  It was how things were for them.

When they reached the business end of the space port, they found even the cargo bays in the eastbound sky docks were white, pretty and filled with light.  Daniel was seeing many things pleasing to his strained, anxious eyes. 

Every place Jack looked, he saw the evidence stacking up in Afarin's favour.  As much as he hated it, the truth of what she was telling them was all around him.  He saw great and bountiful everywhere and knew the cost of making Shonagon so goddamn nice had to be staggering.

They weren't going anywhere.

Docks were docks wherever you were.  Ships moored, containers were loaded and unloaded, customs and other officials swarmed, buyers and sellers haggled, deals were struck.

Only, when Jack finally saw the ships, saw his ship, his fluyt, he realised this was not the same. 

This was fantasy, a dream of a ship with a towering, fragile sail, a webbed dome of spun gold made from a clear, reflective material that soaked up light.  A smaller sail was set a precise distance in front of the larger; a navigational aid, he thought.  The sails were linked by a slender walkway to a long, low-slung, sleekly curved platform open to the sky at the rear.  Behind the platform, linked by another walkway, was the tail.

"She rides the thermals, right?" Jack asked, surprised -- ashamed -- by his eagerness.

Daniel's face brightened at his responsiveness and Jack felt better for it.

"Powered by the sun," Afarin confirmed with a smile.  "As is all the World Above."

"The white metal that runs through so much of the structure?" Daniel suggested, glancing around speculatively.  "It's conductive?  If I recall my college physics, physical and chemical reactions occur more intensely in the stratosphere." 

"Aye."  Afarin was clearly pleased by this evidence of intelligence.  Naturally.  It made it that much more likely they'd fit in and be as productive as she hoped.

"We're shielded from radiation, right?" Jack enquired, eyeing the open deck of his fluyt.

"All of the structures and all open spaces are shielded.  No harm will come to you when you sail, O'Neill." 

Afarin led them onboard, where they found a dour, attractive woman about her age waiting for them with hands planted on hips. 

"This is Forouza," Afarin explained, kissing the woman on the cheek.  "She is a Pilot of Nadereh and an old friend.  I have asked her to watch out for you, O'Neill, and teach you how to sail this boat of yours."

"What's she called?  The boat, I mean?" Daniel asked, sliding gentle fingers over the elegant aerodynamic curve of the canopy framing the gleaming open deck.

"She is the O'Neill," Forouza answered shortly.  "In honour of her Earth-born Pilot.  She is a gift of the Shon to you, human," she informed Jack forthrightly.  "Sail her well and often."

"I do everything well," Jack retorted.  "And as often as I can."

Despite his best efforts, Daniel's lips twitched at this extravagant claim and Jack found himself grinning instead of starting a fight with a possibly worthy new opponent.

"Afarin will tell you all Shon are equal," Forouza stated aggressively as she led Jack over to the control console and showed him how to let the on-board Portal scan his retina to activate the flight controls and telemetry.  "She is an Advocate and must think so.  Know you are a Pilot and some Shon are more equal than others."

"Jack is privileged," Daniel said tactfully.  "He knows it and we're grateful for it."

"Passengers," Forouza retorted without deigning to look at him, "sit where they are put and wait for the Pilot to come to them."

"Forouza is a traditionalist," Afarin sighed, drawing Daniel over to some more of those low, curvy stone chairs they'd seen everyplace.  These were set in a row down either side of the deck so Jack's passengers could look out as they sailed.

Jack caught himself up on his innate possessiveness, knowing his own need to excel would only help to trap him in this life.  He couldn't just do what was being asked of him.  He wasn't capable of that.  Jack was Jack and he would have to do better, exceed expectations.  Beat whatever was thrown at him.

Forouza immediately called Jack on his inattention, peremptorily demanding his complete concentration as she took him through the controls for pitch, yaw and roll, air speed.  He learned how to use the sails as he would have used the ailerons and elevator of a plane to control pitch and roll, and was glad the rudder on the tail worked the way it was supposed to. 

Navigation was not such an issue as he'd imagined.  The boat was equipped with sophisticated systems, including programmable flight control.  He could program in his destination port, the flight computer would make all the computations necessary and track his progress in real time.  Flight lanes were well established.  In fact...

"There's no free flying, is there?" he asked Forouza, the first glamour of the fluyt fading.  "There's so much traffic you have to stay in your flight lane, rigidly control your speed and altitude, accept the computer plays its part."

"You began to understand the way of it, human," Forouza said approvingly.

"Jack," Jack corrected her.  "Jack or even plain old O'Neill.  Not human."

Forouza tilted her head, eyeing him appraisingly.  "Take her out, Jack."

He knew how to handle both a plane and a boat, but a seemingly un-powered object that didn't just fall out of the sky messed with his mind.  Some technology he didn't understand kept the O'Neill in the air just as it kept the spaceport and all the Shon cities in the stratosphere. 

He didn't understand the force field shielding them from radiation, altitude and air pressure either, but he loved what it did for him, the whole world opened out, land and sky spread wide and waiting for him.

He didn't even understand the green gunk on his hands.  It was like wearing a pair of pain-absorbing gloves.  Under the already thinning gel, the burned skin was healing at a phenomenal rate.  Even compared to yesterday, he saw significant progress.  His sensitivity hardly seemed impaired now and he could operate the instrumentation without real difficulty.

It was true to say he wasn't flying, he was sailing his sweet, responsive ship through the sky. 

Ignoring all instructions to the contrary, Daniel came over to stand close by and watch him do this, alight with admiration at Jack's skill and possibly his patience as Forouza sharply corrected, criticised, questioned every move he made.

There was an incredible freedom to flying like this, a powerful sense of owning the sky.  With no turbulence to fight, no weather, no curvature of the earth to follow on a flight path from take-off to landing, Jack was free simply to fly and to see the path he cut through the sky.

"It's beautiful," Daniel breathed reverently, his blue eyes glowing.

It was.  And it was over too soon.

Jack's throat dried when he realised how easy this came.

Forouza barked out emphatic orders to slow the boat some distance from Nadereh, lower altitude a smidge, and glide into their berth in the docks on the lowest levels of the city.  Jack felt it when the O'Neill was taken from his control, the air resistance increasing rapidly until they slid smoothly to a stop, perfectly aligned with the docking ramp automatically extending to meet them.

"Sweet!" he crowed despite himself.

"Aye," Forouza seconded his emotion, although she wasn't about to encourage him to have delusions of adequacy.  Best he could hope, he wouldn't totally embarrass his teacher in front of their fellow Pilots.

"Did you see the city?" Daniel asked excitedly.

Jack had seen a white blur and then the dock.  Mostly the dock. 

"There are five towers in the city," Daniel filled him in, needing no encouragement.  "Four of them evenly spaced around the perimeter -- the city is circular in shape --with a wider, shorter tower set in the middle.  There's a clear horizontal and vertical axis, to stabilise the structure, I guess.  The four tall towers in the upper quadrant of the community -- those are the living quarters?" he asked of Afarin and Forouza.

"In the central structure you will also find markets, places to eat, places to play, to socialise or be entertained, gardens and parks," Afarin replied, always to hand with a thousand useless facts.

"Downtown is dead-centre," Daniel interpreted.  "The lower quadrant, below the horizontal axis, narrows down to a single point, like a counter-balance."

"Here are the docks, Arbiters, Advocates, Healers and Teachers, the sporting arenas, the transport centre to the World Below -- in fact all the services of the community offered to all Shon," Afarin replied cheerfully.  "Here also is the Great Library where you will earn your credit, Jackson."

"Daniel," he corrected her.  "My name is Daniel Jackson."

He was still questioning, still trying to see and understand everything when Afarin gave their address to Forouza, asked her to check in on Jack when she had time, and led them to another swooping glass elevator for a rapid ride up to the main concourse of the community. 

They stepped out onto more of the characteristic figured white stone, bursting with greenery, more of those vivid flowers, busy people teeming, and sunlight flooding down from a vast glass roof -- or maybe it was another force field -- arching over the open space.

"It's a mall," Jack groaned, not hiding his pain.

"Circles constructed within circles," Afarin explained happily, not understanding the reference.  She looked around her with bright eyes.  "To keep down the weight of the structure and to bring light into every home and place of business."

Navigating the small city of Nadereh proved to be simple and, as with everything else, controlled by Portal.  Afarin led them to the middle of the main concourse where four broad, decorative tiled staircases were laid down in a perfect circle, each corresponding with one of the outer towers, the living quarters.

"I have found a dwelling for you high in the south tower," Afarin confided chattily, trotting down the stairs.  "You need only take the train to the south tower and then the elevator to your level.  It is easy to find your way around."

At the bottom of the stairs was a platform, the air kept fresh because the opening narrowed to precisely the dimensions of the train doors.

"You will wait only a few minutes for a train and they run at all hours."  Afarin smiled at them reassuringly.  "Soon you will be home." 

She didn't intend it to sober them, but it did. 

They followed her onto a clean, bright subway car for a brief journey, then out into another large elevator destined for the south quadrant of the south tower and up to the 101st floor.  Their apartment wasn't far from the elevator, just a short walk.  Their eyes were scanned, the door keyed to them, and that was that.  They were done.

Afarin went into the apartment before either of them could commit to opening the door or accepting the reality of this place they would live.  It was hard for them to even follow her in, two men who'd never balked at anything.

The apartment wasn't large and it was very narrow, a single space divided functionally into a series of small open rooms set side by side.  All the fittings and meagre furniture were against the wall to their right, while to the left, tall windows arched the full length of the apartment. 

Daniel began to walk through, began to face this, looking around him in doubt and curiosity at furniture, fixtures and fittings that were almost, but not quite familiar. 

Jack didn't want to face any damned thing, but he was with Daniel in this, so followed him anyway.

There were no hard angles, no plain surfaces except for the glass in the windows.  The furniture was of pale, greyish figured wood -- the basics provided.  Table and chairs, a couch with a large Portal screen in front of it, a bed, a translucent glass brick wall with the bathroom and john behind it.

It was perfectly adequate and functional in every respect and it completely flattened them.

Afarin seemed to know it.  "Is there anything more you wish to know from me?" she offered kindly.  "Questions I might answer?"

"God, no!" Jack recoiled in unfeigned horror.  If he never heard the sound of her voice again it would be too soon.

"I think we should start finding out things for ourselves, Afarin," Daniel politely asserted their need for independence.  "We are the ones who have to live here."

Jack agreed they needed to start finding answers that weren't being filtered and interpreted by officious Shon with their own agendas.  If he was prepared to accept Afarin wasn't lying to them, he was far from trusting her.

Afarin, with more tact than he'd expected, contented herself with showing them one more time how to activate the vital Portal.  It defaulted to a menu of available commands and options, including what looked like a hasty add-on purely for their benefit -- instructions on how to get around their kitchen, dispose of garbage, do laundry and even flush the john. 

"Tell the Portal you wish to communicate and give it my name and title: Advocate Afarin."  She looked seriously at them.  "You may call on me at any time, Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill.  Ask any question.  I am your Advocate and though I do not live in Nadereh, you are not alone.  If you need me, I will come to you and I will speak with you each week on this day via the Portal."

"What day?" Daniel asked promptly.

"It is Elat."

"Thank you," Jack told her at the same time Daniel did, unable to keep an edge of resentment from his voice.  He half-expected Daniel to call him on it, but after he'd shown her out of their apartment and closed the door on this world they were trapped in, Daniel knelt down, unlaced his boots, peeled off his socks, and made for the bed, apparently in a state of collapse. 

Jack did much the same, except he sat up with his back against the wall where he could watch Daniel, who had an arm thrown across his face.

"I guess when you said we had to stay together," Daniel commented with quiet composure, "Afarin interpreted that to mean as, um...partners...I guess.  It's good to know the Shon don't have issues with same-sex relationships, that's another point of shared understanding.  That's -- that's helpful."

"You want to do something about the bed?" Jack asked idly.  He didn't.  On some level he knew he should, but he wouldn't.  They were comfortable together after all these months of roughing it off-world and when Daniel was ready, when he could admit to caring for Jack, he was sure sex would happen for them.  He hoped it would.

He was tired of telling himself he shouldn't be thinking like this, he should be focussing on getting them home whatever it took, but this disaster had brought him so close to what he wanted and so far from everything holding him back.  As much as the anger and the loss, he felt relief.  He felt his friend slipping in to fill the empty spaces, the way he'd always done.

"I don't want to waste precious credit on it."  Apparently accepting their enforced proximity, Daniel rolled onto his side to face Jack, propping himself up on his elbow. 

He had no notion of the temptation he was, how far or how fast the hope of having him was pulling Jack, long unable to reconcile the man, the soldier he was, who he chose to be, with his need for the man he wanted.  He'd hardly been capable of holding the line when he was anchored by the Stargate, his team and his mission - the culmination of everything he'd worked his whole life for.  He wanted Daniel about that much.  Now the balance, the needs he'd been unable to reconcile, what had kept him in check, was gone.

Jack was hardly safe.

"When the device dropped us out of the air here, I remember feeling crushed," Daniel confided.  "There was so much pressure around me, I literally couldn't take a breath."  He looked haltingly up at Jack, pained and afraid, hating to show it.  "I wouldn’t admit this to anyone but you, but I feel that way now."  He reached out to touch Jack's leg for a moment, as if to reassure himself he was real.  "I'm sorry we're here, Jack, sorry for both of us, but I'm glad you're with me."

"Me too," Jack sighed, surrendering for now to friendship, however complicated it had become, ruffling Daniel's hair affectionately.

They didn't know what to do with themselves and so they stayed where they were, in the light and the sun, hiding out from this world a while longer.

 

 

There was so much new stuff for them to learn, so much they had to know, Jack was actually grateful for once Daniel was naturally inquisitive. 

They sat side by side on their pale couch in their pale room and found out what they could about their pale lives. 

First, Daniel dug around until he figured out how to access their credit account and see how much the great and bountiful Shon had set them up with, then did some virtual window shopping to figure out how much they were actually worth.

"We're not rich by any stretch of the imagination," Daniel noted wryly.  "We've got enough here to buy some clothes and stock the kitchen, meet the city utilities deduction from our credit account."

"There's enough for takeout, right?" Jack asked hopefully.  "Only, I noticed some of the eateries you found do takeout.  One of them looked like Chinese food to me.  Lots of bits."

Daniel grinned.  "Don't worry, Jack.  I've lived on this kind of budget even if you haven't."  He looked rueful.  "In fact, I lived on a helluva lot less when I was dependent on grants and it wasn't all that long ago."

"Is that a yes for takeout?"

"We need clothes.  We can eat out now, order in takeout later," Daniel offered a fair compromise.

"You think we need to get out there, huh?"  Jack turned to see Daniel's expression.

"I have work tomorrow, Jack," Daniel said patiently.  "I'm expected at the library.  Afarin told me that when we first set out on the flight from Khousheh.  I'd like nothing more than to make this world go away for a while, but it doesn't change the fact we have to live in it.  And to live, we have to work."

"Reality bites, don't it?" Jack asked rhetorically.

"Want me to see if I can find some sports for you, soften the blow?" Daniel offered generously.

"Go for it," Jack urged him.  "And then we can find out if we have TV."

"Accept input," Daniel instructed the Portal.  "Display competitive sports options."

They watched as more menus popped up on screen, each with a nifty little graphic.  Jack had his choice of swimming, athletics or hitting objects of different sizes with a variety of implements.  "Hockey," he gloated as a reasonably familiar stick shape appeared.  "The true common denominator of the universe."

"Feeling better?" Daniel enquired a trifle sarcastically.  He was a little snippy with the Portal when he got it to display entertainment.  "Okay, we’ve got options here to listen to music, there's a news service -- oh!"

"Feeling better?" Jack mimicked.

"History channel!" Daniel pointed at the screen in case Jack had missed this.

Jack wasn't missing anything.  "Lots of really educational channels," he said sourly.  "What about fun?"

Daniel pointed at the history channel again.

"It's all news, documentaries, reality stuff?  All of it?" Jack was not happy.  "What about cartoons, comedy, prime time?  What about movies?"

"I don't see them."  Daniel was intrigued.  "Lots of evidence of creativity and a very sophisticated delivery system, but it all appears dedicated to factual content."

"What about live entertainment then?  There was an option for that, right?"

"Performances?  Sure.  I saw it too."

"Accept input," Jack told the Portal.  "Display Nadereh performances."  The screen refreshed and this time they saw little video clips of various plays and dramatic productions going on.  He thought it was all light on laughs.

"I think this is a side-effect of the unfathomable Shon economic model," Daniel surmised, sounding anything but certain.  "They seem to have taken money out of the economic equation as much as they can, but haven't managed to completely eradicate the need for it, so it seems they've tied everyone into a centralised system of credit as a means of balancing out the -- the materialism.  Every person in every occupation is valued the same in this society and as individuals we're all worth exactly the same amount of credit.  So, no matter what we do, we make a living."  He glanced at Jack.  "I think."

"I didn't catch anything after unfathomable," Jack promptly disclaimed.

Daniel sighed.  "We need to understand this," he chided an unrepentant Jack.  "I'm guessing that because there aren't actually any real business transactions and no one can make a profit, everything was scaled back accordingly.  No big business, no free market, no movie studios or superstar salaries.  These actors aren't amateurs.  At least, I don't think they are.  They earn their credit by acting, putting on these live performances for the community.  A smaller scale entertainment industry but one that employs and directly benefits many more people."

"No TV?  I don't want to live!" Jack moaned piteously.

"It's crazy!" Daniel argued, not hearing him.  "The point here isn't for anyone to get rich.  Remove that imperative and  _our_  social model collapses.  But this Shon model doesn't work for us either.  What we understand as the utopian ideal simply can't withstand -- I guess basic human nature is the best way to put it.  Greed, avarice, corruption."  He frowned at the Portal.  "I know we haven't looked at Shon government or politics, at the law or judiciary, but I can't get my head around this.  Community, creativity, personal fulfilment?  That's what the Shon live for?  It's just too Star Trek for me.  I can't see how this altruism functions!  Why this society doesn't stagnate."

"They're nice people," Jack said grimly.

"Cheer up, Jack," Daniel advised him unsympathetically.  "It could have been worse for us.  Much, much worse.  We could have wound up completely alone in some desolate alien backwater scratching a living from the land for the rest of our very short lives."

"At least that way there would only have been you around to kill when I finally snapped from sensory deprivation."

"You'll survive!" Daniel snapped at him, then subsided miserably, painful memories crowding in.  "I did."

"Desolate alien backwater just about sums up Abydos for me," Jack retorted, having no difficulty reading him.

"It wasn't so bad," Daniel argued defensively.

"It was the stone age, Daniel.  They didn't even have paper, let alone books.  You wanted to communicate, you either had to get in someone's face or chisel into a wall, and even then they couldn’t read it."

"I was privileged to experience that life even for the short time I had. And I loved my wife," Daniel asserted with dignity, not realising he was opening the door to a conversation Jack had wanted to have with him for a long time.

"If I'd doubted it, I wouldn't have let you stay with her," Jack replied evenly, noting Daniel couldn't deny what he was saying to him.  More and more he wished he'd taken Daniel back to Earth with him then, spared him the loss and the guilt he carried. 

And now he had to add to it.

"You know I have to break my promise to you, don't you?" he said as compassionately as he could.  "There's no way we can find her, Daniel.  Not now.  She's gone and I'm sorry, I really am, but it's over for you.  For both of us."

The look on Daniel's face as he dropped his head was unbearably sad to Jack.  He threw a rough arm around his shoulders, hugged him hard, feeling like a bastard. 

"I can't take it in," Daniel admitted so reluctantly Jack barely heard him.  "I can't make it real.  This isn't like Abydos.  I didn't choose this and I don't want it," he said, stark in his distress.  "I loved being part of SG-1, I loved what we did.  I loved what we found through the Stargate, every answer we figured out, every question we learned to ask, every hope and expectation.  I think now..."  His voice caught.

"You love the possibilities of the Stargate, the exploration, more than you loved your wife?" Jack supplied very gently.  "I always thought you were more in love with Abydos than with Sha'uri, Daniel.  This culture you'd lived and breathed for half your life wasn't dead to you anymore, it was real and it was yours for the taking, just so long as you took her too."

Daniel looked around at Jack, troubled and wondering at him, at where this was coming from.  "You never talked to me this way before," he queried hesitantly.

"Maybe I wasn't free to," Jack suggested, still unable to entirely prevent himself from thinking about all the possibilities of their enforced intimacy.  Of loving Daniel openly in time.

"But you are now?" Daniel asked unhappily.  More of that reality he couldn't quite face.

Jack wasn't yet ready to admit to his personal agenda or to say he'd wanted to find Sha'uri and bring her home almost as badly as Daniel because he wholeheartedly believed they would never have lasted.

Sha'uri couldn't compete with the lure of the Stargate; she'd feared Daniel's passion for archaeology and she'd feared the influence of Jack himself.  Brave as she was, Sha'uri was so ignorant and unsophisticated she couldn't have functioned in American society and she would have been terrified of everything taking Daniel away from her.  She was too much a product of her people; Daniel had moved on from her and from them in every conceivable way, though he had never intended to. 

Stripped of her romance, Jack was sure Daniel would have seen in time the only thing he could do for his wife was let her return to her own people.

"Teal'c will keep looking for Sha'uri and Skaara," he assured Daniel shortly, unwilling and unable to crush him completely.  "He owes you and he'll carry on the quest in your name.  As long as Amaunet remains loyal to Apophis, there's a chance Teal'c will find her, free her and take her home."

"While I have to let her go?"

"Yes," Jack told him briskly as he stood up and pulled a resistant Daniel to his feet.  "You have to let her go, Daniel.  We have to let everything go." 

Daniel didn't want to hear this any more than Jack wanted to say it. 

"This is all there is for us.  At least for now, for as long as we can't find a way home," Jack insisted.  "This is our life.  I know I'm hardly in a position to lecture on this one, but even I know when we have to accept our limits.  If we're going to survive here, we have to move on.  Deal with what's in front of us."

It wasn't the first time he'd forced Daniel to choose him over Sha'uri.  It was a hard thing to watch Daniel struggle with, but Jack won out in the end.  He always did.  He won out over Daniel's wife, won out even over the addictive explorations that had taken Daniel from his wife in the first place.  As deeply as Daniel cut into Jack's identity, his sense of self, he cut into Daniel's.

He knew the moment Daniel gave in to him, but waited him out.  Waited to hear him say it.

"I know it," Daniel sighed.

"So let's go take a look at the town."  Jack even managed to smile.  "Start figuring out where we fit in and what we have to do to make it here."

His hard-won resilience kicking in, Daniel smiled bravely back as he put on his boots. 

"I need to find the library.  I need to start looking for answers in the historical record as well as on the Portal.  If there's any information about the Asgard, any way we can appeal for help to a higher authority, I intend to find it.  We haven't exhausted every possibility, Jack.  Not yet."

This was Daniel sounding much more like himself. 

"I don't think Afarin would intentionally lie to us," he went on, "But we're just another case to her and her agenda is to have us contributing to Shon resources, not draining them.  Anything that can be done, we'll have to do ourselves."

"I need to find the shipping office," Jack agreed encouragingly.  "That's where all the work comes in and all the Pilots hang out.  I'll tap into that network, see what I can find out there."

"The economics of nice people," Daniel muttered darkly as he went over to the apartment door and hesitated visibly before he could bring himself to open it.

"They play hockey and they don't have sci-fi pants," Jack pointed out in a helpful spirit, gentle where he could have been crowing over getting Daniel past this first hurdle.  "It could be worse."

"What are sci-fi pants?"

"Baggy, complicated, glow-in-the-dark things."

"You don't watch a lot of sci-fi, do you?"

"I woke up in a dress.  This is a legitimate concern."

"It's good to know whatever else fails, you've kept your keen fashion sense fully intact," Daniel said witheringly, entering fully into the spirit of taking on -- and bickering over -- the smallest things.  What they were going through might just be more digestible this way.

"It's good to know you'll finally be acquiring fashion sense," Jack retorted as they wandered down the hallway towards the elevator.  "The Shon all dress better than you."

Their return journey to the main tower proved as easy as Afarin had promised and when they emerged back on the main concourse, they simply walked around in a slow full circle to orient themselves.  Surrounding the central transit area was a communal green space, with people walking, talking, sitting, lounging and eating with reassuring normality.

"We're living in a giant mall.  Can you believe that?" Jack complained again as he picked an eatery smelling meaty and particularly good.  It was a buffet arrangement where they took trays as they went in and asked for any dish from the day's selection that looked good to them. 

The eatery staff were of both genders, different ages and sizes, all of them efficient and friendly.  Daniel dazzled them with his sweet, sunny smile and explained they were new to Shonagon and didn't know what anything tasted like, except for some purple vegetables they'd had in the spaceport and hadn't cared for. 

This got him a few laughs and a lot of helpful attention.  The eatery staff set up a taste test for them, letting them sample from each dish before they took a portion. 

By trial and error, they assembled a solid meat-and-potatoes type dinner, acquired a flagon of drinkable ale and a corner table where they could watch the bland new world go by.

"I feel better," Daniel admitted while they were eating.  "It's good we can function here, however little we know about the Shon."

"I'm going to come down to the library with you tomorrow, check it out before I go to the shipping office," Jack told him.  "I need to know it's safe for you, so quit looking stubborn.  I'm not over-reacting, I'm doing my job."

"I thought your job was teamster-cum-cab driver?" Daniel corrected him, looking dour.

"Don't tell me it's not breaking your heart you only get to handle books, not read them."

"It's a start," Daniel argued mildly.  "When I find out more about the Shon, about their culture and history, if I don’t find us a way out of here, I can talk to Afarin about getting back into archaeology.  I'm sure she'll help me when I've learned enough I can genuinely contribute."  He smiled a little at Jack's surprised frown.  "You've been trying to tell me we need to think long-term, Jack," he reminded him unnecessarily.  "I'm only giving it my best shot."

Jack had to be satisfied with that.  He thought he'd stirred up enough of a hornet's nest with Daniel as it was.  He'd given him a lot to think about; now he needed to give him time to come around.  Daniel was never going to be content to let Jack make his decisions for him.

They weren't rushed by the eatery staff, taking their time over the ale, which had a pleasant nutty taste.  They left only when they noticed the pace in the central concourse was slowing perceptibly and thought the stores were likely to close soon.  They walked over to the nearest Portal screen, enquired about men's clothing stores and were directed to the outer ring of the central tower, levels 52 and 53, eastern quadrant.

Here they found many small, distinctive stores and a wider range of clothing than they might have expected.  There was no chain store economy to deal with; these stores looked and felt like exclusive designer outlets.  The Shon had an accepted 'business' look for work dictated by the needs of the many occupations supported by this impossible economy, but freely expressed their individuality in leisure clothes.   The colours were brighter or lighter than Jack or Daniel were used to, some of the fabrics felt different to the touch, and the cut and fit of pants and shirts was much tighter than Daniel liked, but made Jack very happy indeed.

Daniel took the same direct approach he had with the eatery staff and soon learned the diversity in style, fabrics and colours was driven by the store owners themselves.  Sustained by the community, freed from the need to make a profit, they designed and made the clothes they sold. 

As a privileged Pilot, Jack was allowed to wear whatever he pleased, but Daniel was encouraged everywhere to take black or navy pants and crisp white shirts to be worn loose, many of them with individual features like a mandarin collar, asymmetrical points emphasising his slim hips, or turned-back cuffs.

The Shon were an old enough people to be at ease with their sexuality.  Men wanted to look good here, they wanted smart, colourful clothes that appealed to a partner or drew the admiration of a passer-by.

Daniel was distinctly uncomfortable at how very good he was told he looked in store after store.  He had issues with being noticed because he just didn't think of himself that way.  Not sexy.

Jack knew Daniel had been mauled pretty good by Hathor, enough his DNA had featured in the snake-baby clean-up on Aisle 2 of the SGC men's locker room, but he wouldn't bet the farm Daniel and Sha'uri had been at it like rabbits.  One, they were both virgins when they met up; two, Daniel would have wanted to get to know her well and be completely convinced she was with him because she wanted to be, and three, Sha'uri wasn't knocked up when Jack came back. 

He wouldn't necessarily have read anything into that, except maybe Daniel had had to get creative when it came to the issue of birth control, if only Sha'uri hadn't made such a huge production job of sucking out her Daniel's tonsils in front of him, Carter and the assembled Abydonians and shocked the boy out of his sandals.

Add to that tally of jealous insecurities the enormous cartouche room Daniel had managed to excavate in a frighteningly short space of time, and it didn’t take an obsessed Air Force colonel to figure out the home fires weren't exactly blazing.

He should be deeply ashamed he'd spent as much time as he had speculating about Daniel's sex life.  He should be dragged out someplace and shot for wanting Daniel to actually be as innocent and inexperienced as he appeared because it meant he wouldn't see Jack coming until he put the moves on him and they wound up in bed together. 

Sadly, Jack embraced his shame and figured if he was going to hell anyway, he might as well enjoy himself on the way down.  Some day, Daniel would be thanking him for good sex.

In the meantime, Jack was silently thanking Daniel for a great show that was over way too soon. 

They were back in the apartment before they knew it, putting away oozing fruit pastries, the local equivalent of milk and the hot pick-me-up beverage they'd grabbed for breakfast before stowing socks and shoes, pants and shirts, jackets and a sweater or two, underwear and sleepwear. 

That was the best, from where Jack was ogling discreetly.  The sleepwear.  The fabrics were light and fine, and clung sensuously to the skin.  There were no jackets or t-shirts, which meant Daniel had to bare a lot more skin than he was comfortable with, but he did okay with this until he caught sight of his reflection in the windows and realised absolutely everything he had was on display.  Then he slunk over to the couch, folded his arms over his slim, nicely muscled chest and looked pissy.

Always keen to show support for a friend, Jack changed into his sleepwear too.  Then he activated the Portal and put on the evening news.  Daniel swung up his legs, curled up against the arm of the couch and slid his bare toes under Jack's thigh to keep warm.  Jack had no objection to being used in this fashion.

They watched the news in silence for a while and found it weird.  It wasn't only that they didn't know any of the people, places or events being reported, they weren't used to this much good news or to anchors who weren't nipped, tucked, Perma-Tanned, coiffed and cheesy.  After half an hour without a single sound bite, thinly veiled editorial, commercial or unsubtle product placement, Jack -- an experienced viewer -- realised what was going on.

"They think we're smart," he explained to Daniel, not sure how to feel about this.  "They think we have minds and we want to use them.  This is informed reporting."

"We could always watch the history channel," Daniel prompted hopefully.

"Or the channel covering all the sporting events."

"I didn't see that one."

"You weren't looking."

Daniel's toes dug discontentedly into Jack's thigh.

"Different universe," Jack sighed.  "Same arguments."

 

 

Daniel woke some time through the night, hardly knowing where he was, let alone when he was.  Jack was sleeping on his stomach, his face turned towards Daniel.  They'd gravitated together in their sleep and Daniel had to ease out from under the casual arm thrown across his waist. 

He crept into the bathroom to pee and then gulp down some cold water, splashed more on his face and then was lured irresistibly to the windows.  The sky shivered with stars clearer than he had ever seen them.  The epic grandeur of these unfamiliar constellations held him spellbound until warm hands came to rest on his shoulders.

"Okay?" Jack asked softly.

"Just looking at the stars."

Jack chose to look with him, standing close enough Daniel was drawn unconsciously by his body heat.  He started in surprise when his back came to rest against a broad, lightly furred chest, but Jack only put his arms around him.  Not sure which of them needed the warmth of the other, Daniel found he was not willing to break away from the embrace so long as Jack was content to wait with him.

Looking silently out at the stars, mapping the night sky in their minds, in time the tension seeped from their bodies.

"Better?" Jack murmured.

Daniel trod lightly on his foot in answer.

"Then come back to bed."

They slid under the blankets, Daniel less self-conscious about sharing his personal space than he had been before.  Something about being hugged by Jack seemed to sap his desire to want to keep any kind of distance.  They lay facing each other, close enough they could touch if they wanted to.  If he was pushed, Daniel would have admitted to a sense of security in having Jack close by him and he hoped he was of some comfort to Jack too.

"Nervous about tomorrow?" Jack asked.

"A little," Daniel confided.  "I keep thinking of all the things we don't know and don't have the cultural references to understand.  I have no idea how the library staff will feel about the realities of having an abysmally ignorant alien foisted on them and if I'll wind up with all the menial, gopher jobs because they don't know what else to do with me.  I worry I'll be completely miserable and there's nothing I can do about it."

Jack surprised him again by brushing a soft knuckle over his cheek. 

"If the library doesn’t work for you then Afarin will find something that does," Jack promised.  "Trust me on that."

Jack closed his eyes to sleep then, leaving Daniel to wonder a little at his own eagerness in lapping up all of this affection being lavished on him.

 

 

The librarian Roshak was waiting eagerly for Daniel and Jack when they arrived at the public entrance on the uppermost floor of the Great Library.  He was a very small, very old man who would have made Gandhi look robust.  Bracing himself expertly with an exquisitely carved and polished stick, he rushed forward to embrace Daniel as a kindred spirit with staggeringly energetic pleasure.

"Welcome, Jackson!" Roshak beamed.  "Dear boy, you are welcome indeed."

"Having some recruitment problems?" Jack wanted to know.

"You have no idea, young man," Roshak said tragically.

Jack adored him already.

"How many staff are there, Roshak?" Daniel asked worriedly.  "Including us?"

"Only twelve of us now, my boy," Roshak replied heavily.  "And I fear you will be left entirely to your own resources in curating the ancient history collection."

Jack smiled broadly at Daniel.  "I think you're in safe hands," he said insultingly, smacking him exuberantly on the shoulder before sauntering back the way he came.

"Pilot." Daniel jerked an explanatory thumb in Jack's direction.  Roshak nodded understandingly.  "And please, call me Daniel.  I'm Daniel Jackson."

"Daniel?  Is that your honorific among your people?  I am Curator Roshak, you know."

"No, Daniel is my name," he explained, noticing he and Roshak were dressed very much alike, at least in terms of colour.  It seemed he'd exchanged one uniform for another.  "My honorific is Doctor.  Doctor Daniel Jackson.  I'm a doctor of archaeology, which is the excavation and study of the physical remains of earlier civilisations.  I'm also a doctor of anthropology -- that's the origin and development of human beings, their societies, customs and beliefs -- and of philology, which is my particular field of expertise.  Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages.  I have advanced degrees -- the highest level of education on my world -- in each of these areas."

"I will see to it this is made known to the university," Roshak decided imperatively.  "Advocate Afarin desired me to do all in my power to ensure your interrupted academic studies might continue but perhaps she did not fully comprehend you are one of the Literati of your world.  If you wish to undertake excavation on the World Below, we will simply have to send for more of the university students to assist you."

"More students?" Daniel was beginning to feel slightly dazed by this torrent of yet more new information he had to assimilate.

"There are seven or so assigned to assist with maintenance of the ancient history collection," Roshak explained dismissively.  "A waste of valuable space, every single one of the useless sharpers."

"So when you say I'm going to be left entirely to my own devices, what you mean is that it's just me and my seven or so students?"

"Sharpers," Roshak sighed, leading Daniel over to the bank of elevators.

Daniel took a perfunctory look around the entrance to the Great Library as they walked but it was very much the same as everywhere else he'd been on Shonagon.  The same creamy, carved white stone walls, floors and ceilings, the glint of the white metal threading through the myriad of abstract designs, the same soft curves on every surface they were seeing with monotonous regularity. 

While he understood the functionality of the selected materials in helping to power and stabilise Nadereh, he felt almost cheated the Shon had gone so far in making it beautiful without stopping to consider they were making it all the same.  Sure, there was a certain uniformity in American architecture, but Shonagon had about as much individuality as the average high security prison or the concrete bunkers of Stargate Command.  The packaging was just prettier.

When Roshak escorted Daniel out onto the ancient history floor of the library, he could have jumped for joy not only to find an enormous treasure trove of books entirely new to him, but also a little colour in life. 

It was becoming plain to him why so many of the Shon liked to express themselves creatively and why their clothes were so...well...different.  It was probably all in reaction to the rigidity of their surroundings.  If you didn’t do something to make a difference -- to make your life, your space, stand out from all the others, you'd go nuts.

He was able to tell Roshak completely sincerely this was the single greatest collection of ancient history texts he'd been privileged to see and had the pleasure of making the old man's day.

"You're putting a lot of faith in me, Roshak," Daniel felt honour-bound to sound a note of caution.  "You have to remember I have everything to learn about this world and its people.  And I do mean everything."

"The sharpers will do as you bid them," Roshak suggested.  "Let the students be your guides at the first.  They are at least educated."

"I take it we're holding them hostage in return for credit?"

Roshak chuckled, tickled by this image.  "Aye," he confirmed, twinkling.  "They have known only the Portal for all of their lives.  Much of the knowledge contained within these books is freely available to be searched and used at will through the Portal so they cannot see the point of keeping books at all."

"If they had to work harder for the knowledge, they'd respect it more," Daniel said dryly, thinking about how much of the past had been lost on Earth and how hard it was to piece together their history from the scattered remnants. 

"Precisely!" Roshak crowed delightedly.  "I cannot believe you will disappoint me, Daniel Jackson."

Daniel flushed and demurred, but Roshak ignored his protests in a lordly fashion reminding him a great deal of Jack, and went blithely on with the grand tour.

On this low a level in the library -- and in the lower quadrant of the city itself -- the space was more or less a semi-circle.  The imposing rows of shelves were built to follow exactly the curve of the outer window wall.  Each curved sweep of shelves was laid out with symmetrical precision, the shortest row framing the library desk and the longest bordering numerous study tables and private carrels set before the endless arching windows.  Aisles cut through the rows of shelves from the staff desk on the inner wall to the student desks on the outer window wall like the spokes of a wheel.

The ceiling above the library desk was carved with a complicated knotted design Daniel wanted to take a better look at when he had the time.  It was the first carving he'd seen which wasn't an abstract, impressionistic rendition of plants, trees or other natural shapes. 

The library desk was substantial, a sleek power statement in its height, dimensions and impressive solidity, and it was made of the same carved, polished pale grey wood as the furniture in the apartment.  Constructed in quarter sections separated by a narrow open aisle, the arrangement allowed for easy access in and out by the library staff.  Or rather by Daniel and the strangely absent student labour. 

As the collection's curator, Daniel was privileged to have a raised, open office set behind the desk and reached by a shallow spiral staircase.  When Roshak gratefully sat down to rest and recover from his exertions, Daniel trotted up the inviting stairs to take a look at where he'd be spending a substantial part of the rest of his life. 

The white office walls were low, perhaps chest height, topped by curved panels of frosted glass and lined with scholarly books on the minutiae of library science, which he thought guiltily he ought to at least consult.  He had a desk, complete with Portal, plus a large library table to spread out his real work on. 

It was by far the most attractive space he'd ever had the privilege of studying in.

Thoroughly chastened and undeserving, Daniel went down to join Roshak, who was watching his reactions to all of this largesse with doting professional pride.

"I can't help but feel I'm here under false pretences, Roshak," Daniel admitted in acute embarrassment.  "I love books, I do love to read and to study, but I'm not a librarian or even a trained curator.  I just -- I don't know if I can give you what you need and this collection deserves."

"What you do not know, you will learn, yes?" Roshak asked keenly.

"Of course," Daniel replied somewhat stiffly.  However negatively he personally felt about being buried alive in the ass-end of an alien city for the rest of his not-so-natural life, he had  _standards_.  He would do the job.

"At this point in my fading career and the relentless technological advancement of my people, that is truly more than I have learned to hope for, dear boy," Roshak sighed mournfully.  "It is no longer possible for me to be disappointed."

"I'm sorry," Daniel winced sympathetically, finding another small point of shared understanding.  "If it helps, a writer on my world, a man named Henry Fielding, wrote centuries ago that a man must read in order to live.  I've always tended to agree with him."

"As do I."  Roshak patted Daniel gently on the arm.  "My people wish only to look forward, you know," he confided sadly, staring out at the silent, empty library.  "Our lives are anchored in the present and face the future.  The past is not forgotten, but it has grown...comfortable.  Too many questions were asked and answered so long ago.  Now we do not look back to the past, for it no longer challenges us.  It has been brought in every possible way into our present."

Daniel had seen this for himself in the feature attraction of Guide Zinat's palace, the popular kiddies play-date, class craft project, lovers' lane and dog-walk.  "I know just what you mean by that," he reassured Roshak. 

"You are come just in time, Daniel Jackson," Roshak said poignantly.

Daniel felt pathetically inadequate, incapable of living up to the trust being placed in him, but couldn't bring himself to slap the old man down. 

After being told to bring all his questions direct to Roshak, or failing that, to the staff meeting he was required to attend at eight of the clock on Kem, he was relieved when the old man returned to his beloved literature collection on the main floor.

Unnerved he didn't know what day of the week it was, or if it was even a week, Daniel took a slow walk around to familiarise himself with at least the physical layout of the priceless Shon heritage he was now wholly responsible for conserving. 

The library shelves were of the same striking white metal that had first attracted Daniel when he saw the artefact -- the unsuspected dalkesh transportation device -- among Ma'chello's inventions, and had the same seeming fragility.  Looking at the elegant, intricate curves enclosing immaculately ordered, richly bound books, he felt as if he'd stumbled onto the set of a fantasy movie.  All that was missing were his seven or so press-ganged dwarves.

It struck him as immensely sad all of this knowledge and grandeur was so isolated, so forgotten by the busy, worthy people above.  It was a terrible waste.

The collection was so extensive, the entire morning passed while Daniel wandered around with a pen -- a fountain pen, of all things -- and notebook he'd found behind the desk.  He was so busy mapping the collection and trying to fathom not only its arrangement but the flow of Shon history, his stomach was growling audibly when he finally realised how much time this was taking. 

Looking from his wristwatch to the windows to track the position of the sun, Daniel saw time as he understood it didn't correspond.  His watch and his body clock told him it was early afternoon, but the sun was still casting shadows in pretty much the same direction it had been all morning, which meant it wasn't noon yet. 

Having lived through the horrible disorientation that came from acclimating to a thirty-six hour day on Abydos, he grimly headed back to his office to check out the Shon marking of time. 

He thought there wouldn't be any one moment, any single decision when he would know he'd given up on home, only a series of small, inevitable steps like these.  However much he might tell himself he needed this knowledge in order to function, he would acclimate. 

And in time, he would accept.

"Saimu, Curator," a laconic, disembodied voice called out, almost giving Daniel a heart-attack.

He spun around to find a jaded hazel eye peering down at him through a slender parting in an unholy mop of tightly braided blond hair.  The eye -- and all of the hair -- belonged to a cadaverously thin young man with bony knees breaking through baggy pea-green sci-fi pants.

"Pedram," the cadaver informed him.

"Daniel," Daniel replied, taking the path of least resistance.  At least this was company.  "I was expecting seven of you.  Seven or so."

"The geezer tell you that?" Pedram queried with faintly amused resignation.  "He cannot count or keep track because between the eight of us, across the six days the library is open, we make barely one quarter of you, Curator."

"You're part-time employees?"

"You look sick, Curator," Pedram observed with a certain experienced recognition while Daniel was trying to work out where his little empire had gone.

"I need help," Daniel stated baldly.  "I'm new here."

"Aye.  So we heard."

"In my world we mark time like this," Daniel stated crisply.  "There are sixty seconds in one minute, sixty minutes in one hour.  It takes the sun twenty-four hours to orbit the planet, so those twenty-four hours make one day, one solar day.  Seven solar days make one week.  It takes fifty-two weeks or three hundred and sixty-five days to make one year, which is the time it takes for our planet to make one complete orbit of the sun."

"It takes only one of your minutes to ask this of the Portal," Pedram replied with insufferable patience.

"And less time than that for me to kick your ass," Daniel retorted without any patience at all.

"By your reckoning, Curator, there are twenty-nine hours in our day, eight days in our week and..." Pedram hesitated.  "I do not know how many days in our year."

Daniel raised a severe eyebrow, even though at this point, if he was being fair, he would have to say he didn't know either.

"If I did know, I would not be studying media," Pedram said sullenly.

"The days, the weeks and the years are longer," Daniel briskly recapped.  "That's all I needed to know.  For now," he added quickly.

"Can I go now?" Pedram enquired laconically.  "The boju books don't shelve themselves, Curator."

"After you tell me what day it is."

 

 

"Hey!" Jack jumped up from the couch when Daniel slammed the apartment door behind him.  "How was work?"

Daniel silently handed Jack an armful of books and his glasses, tottered limply past him, fell face down on the bed and pulled a pillow over his head.

"That good, huh?" Jack snorted.

Daniel whimpered.

"Well, pull yourself together," Jack advised unkindly.  "I found us a little taste of home for dinner.  Hot dogs!  I think they may actually  _be_  dog, but..."

Daniel hit him with one pillow and burrowed sulkily under the other.

Jack lashed him in the butt with an expertly whipped towel, then strolled away sniggering when he yelped.

"You had a good day!" Daniel accused him, unreasonably outraged.

"Sorry," Jack apologised insincerely.  "Want to tell me what was so lousy about a day packed with books, books and more books?"

"Students, students and more students."  Daniel came over to the table, deciding he was in just the mood to chow down on man's best friend in a bun.  "Employed as library pages in some tragically misguided, last-ditch attempt to graduate them from the university before their proud parents give up and die."  He drove a fork deep into a meaty sausage.

Jack carefully handed him a hunk of buttered bread to make his sandwich, trying to keep his hands out of forking range.

"I naively thought Roshak was being too hard on them," Daniel divulged dispiritedly.  "That he was too set in his ways to appreciate his own prejudice against the young."

"I thought he was a sweet old guy," Jack commented.

"He is.  The students are evil."

"Evil?"  Jack mulled over this heartfelt declaration in the context of their experiences of the last few years.  Then he moved Daniel's cutlery to a place of safety.

"Do you know what it feels like to find a gap on a shelf where a book should be?" Daniel demanded, glowering malignantly.

"Honestly?"

"There's a system.  I looked it up.  I felt I had to, you know, make the effort.  For Roshak's sake.  In every library, a system."

"Okay, I get it," Jack said soothingly.  "A system."

Refusing to be talked down, Daniel grabbed for a vaguely military metaphor.  "You fire your weapon.  You strip your weapon."  He shot Jack a look that required his full and immediate understanding.  "You clean it.  You secure your weapon back in the armoury."

"You take a book," Jack extrapolated intelligently.  "You read it."

"You see where I'm going with this?"

"You get the weapon?"

"Oh, I wish!"

"If it helps, the Shon have spears, arrows, three types of sword and death rays that take out stars."

"Stars?" Daniel repeated, startled from his thirst for vengeance for a second.

"We couldn't work out how the Shon got to stay such nice people," Jack said dryly.  "Turns out they walk softly and carry a big boju stick."

"Sounds like my students," Daniel muttered darkly.

"I've been talking to people all day at the shipping office," Jack hinted broadly, an expert at pandering to Daniel's endless curiosity.  "For what it's worth, I think you were right on the money in what you were saying about the Shon going the way of the Asgard, or the Ancients, or the Nox.  Only they're not there yet.  They're still a long way from it."

"Really?"  Brightening up a bit, Daniel allowed himself to be coaxed into accepting another hotdog.

"Community service is all well and good, but if you ask me, what it's really about is getting something for something."

Daniel was quite impressed.

"They don't really need money," Jack explained.  "They just haven't reached the stage where they can take giving shit away for free.  They can't get past humanity's bottom line."

"Which is?"

"What's in it for me?"

Forget impressed; Daniel was looking downright awed.  "I think you just encapsulated the whole of human evolution in one sentence."

"You're not going to argue for intellectual accomplishment or making the world a better place or anything like that?"

"Not tonight."

"The library is really a mess, huh?" Jack's knee nudged Daniel's in a friendly way.

"I've been buried alive down there."

"You'll figure it out."

"I have to."

"But you just don't want to."

Daniel looked away from Jack's dark, understanding eyes and took another bite of his sandwich.

"It'll get better," Jack reassured.

"Honestly?  That's what I'm afraid of."

It was a long time before Jack answered.

"Me too."

 

 

After several days, Daniel started to feel he had a routine. 

The Portal woke them very early, he let go of Jack, apologised disjointedly for crowding him, showered, dressed, checked Jack's hands were healing the way Omid had said they should, gulped down a steaming cup of the hot pick-me-up beverage, ate tart fruit and something a lot like oatmeal.

He went to work, sorted more books, kicked the ass of whichever student was around to wreak havoc that day, memorised more of the boju library classification scheme and saved his sanity only by losing himself in reading rich history rotten with intrigue, exploration, explosive creativity and epically inflated egos.

He came home, ate whatever one or other of them had scrounged up for dinner, watched some news with Jack, talked with Jack, argued about not going out with Jack, continued his grinding search for the elusive Asgard or  _anything_  he knew in the historical record, crawled into bed exhausted a little apart from Jack.

He didn't feel he caught a breath until their first day free from work and then he felt it stretch out uncomfortably before him.  Too many hours to fill, too much for him to think about, too much to do. 

He wanted none of it.

He wanted to crawl back into bed and hide out with Jack.

Instead, he drank his hot pick-me-up tea, activated the Portal, tried to figure out how they were supposed to pick up the threads of this life in Nadereh and saw right away their credit was dwindling faster than they'd budgeted for. 

"No more takeout," he warned, deflating Jack before he'd even swallowed his overly expensive pre-packaged breakfast.  "I cook and I know you can at least go through the motions, so you can take that look off your face and forget whatever lame excuse you were about to come up with."

"I don't like to go through the motions of eating, though!" Jack protested vehemently.

"Then it's in your own best interests to improve rapidly," Daniel informed him unsympathetically. "Because you'll be eating what you cook four times a week from now on."

Ignoring Jack's pouting and grumbling over his incipient domestic slavery, Daniel dragged him out into the city in search of fresh cooking ingredients from Nadereh's market. 

Here, Jack's superior navigational skills paid dividends.  The more fitness-minded Shon shunned the efficient elevators and subway cars in favour of slim pedestrian walkways slung between each ring of each tower, making it possible to walk from the outer perimeter of the city to the central mall.

They rode up in the elevator until they reached the uppermost level of the south tower and were surprised to find themselves in a very pleasant residents' garden filling not only the roof of the outermost circle their apartment was fortunately located in, but all the residential rings to the core. 

Jack looked around dispiritedly at the well-tended trees, shrubs and flowers they were walking through and hesitated at the entryway of the span leading across to the outermost circle of the central tower.  They could see the bright stalls of the market clearly from here, occupying the roof level of what constituted Nadereh's 'downtown' in its entirety. 

"Not just a mall," he said discontentedly.  "A small town mall.  God help us."

"No shit," Daniel sighed, surprising a snicker out of Jack. 

The dizzying height of the walkway was less daunting to him than being roofed in by all this glass. 

It was summertime in the World Above and the living was easy.  It was all sunlight and clear blue skies, but they couldn't touch it and nothing outside the glass, nothing real could touch them. 

Nadereh was neat, nice, safe and sanitised. 

They were even above the weather.  The seasons. 

They were above it all.

"It's nice," Daniel commented laconically.  "All of it."  He waved a sarcastic hand at the bustling market, the bright gardens, the happy people, the shiny city.  " _Nice_."  He paused for comic effect, although he never got the timing of a joke.  "Makes me want to jump."

"You think you're depressed now, wait until you have to start eating my cooking," Jack warned grimly.  "You'll be back on the roof in no time, believing you can fly."

"Oh, quit your whining," Daniel warned him with a grin, perking up a bit at this entertaining bitterness. 

He was actually looking forward to Jack's amateur theatrics in the kitchen.  Nothing spiced up a meal more than the wounded sensibilities of a thwarted and hungry artiste who took Daniel's practiced ability to eat anything put in front of him as a mortal insult.  The nights Jack cooked and Daniel ate burnt offerings with gusto, he could expect fragrant retaliation from the past master of the ambush nocturnal emission.

Jack was not nice.

This was tremendously reassuring and comforting.

In fact, Jack was about the only thing in Nadereh that did feel real to Daniel. 

In appreciation of this, he elbowed Jack shyly in the ribs as they strolled into the outermost circle of hell.  Or at least the morning market crowd. 

Jack looked around questioningly, read something in his face that pleased him, smiled dazzlingly and elbowed him back.

Daniel was glad of it.  He might not be able to come out and thank Jack for anchoring them to sanity like this, but Jack knew he felt it just the same.

"Let's do some damage!" Jack rubbed his hands, eyeing arts and crafts vindictively. 

The fun part of hanging out with him was never knowing if he meant this kind of thing literally until he was happening to people.  Since his taste in décor ran to fighter planes and attack helicopters rather than complicated tie-dye and things that tinkled or wafted, Daniel scooped him up and marched him smartly on to the next ring of the market.

Jack seemed to quite enjoy Daniel manhandling him assertively.  He issued some quite creative threats against randomly selected painters, sculptors, textile and ceramic artists, corn doll and other rustic charm makers, basket weavers, florists and garden tool salespersons.  Then he didn't quit grouching about being dragged forcibly past the circle for children's toys, followed by a litter of puppies begging for a petting intervention, until Daniel found him a funny stall with obscene vegetables.

Jack's run through their invariable practice of try-before-you-buy made Daniel blink and then turn his back blushing, but this was as nothing compared to the effect he had on the pretty, wide-eyed young lady running the stall. 

Or her decidedly un-funny husband.

They moved swiftly on.

It didn't take long for the reality of living in Nadereh to assert itself and suck all the energy out of their day.

The weird purple vegetables weren't the only ones they didn't like and couldn't eat.  They couldn't find anything like a tomato and the closest thing they did find to an onion even made Chilli Jack spit it out.  The smell of the fresh fish alone made Daniel gag and back away.  The milk was only something like milk and there was no coffee. 

No chocolate. 

The sweetness in the oozy, overly expensive breakfast pastries Jack coveted came from a sticky cane that had to be stewed for hours into syrup before you could use it for anything and they were warned it was vile in hot drinks. 

There was no candy as they knew it, but nuts and fruits were roasted in a coating of the sweet syrup.

Cold drinks abounded, with a choice of fruits, vegetables, cereals and nuts freshly blended into juices, a creamy dairy substance like yoghurt or a foaming milkshake.   There were many choices of ales and wines.  Various green leaves and stalks were edible.  There were sharp dips for cold meats or salad.  Fish could be bought in the grocery stores to boil-in-the-bag, blessedly odour free.  Corn -- or something very close to it -- grew in abundance in the fields in the World Below the city. 

Bread came in all shapes, sizes, textures and tastes, some of it very good.   There was cake and even frosting.  Roasted vegetables could be heaped into a pastry or a bread, layered with mild or pungent cheese and eaten like pizza, although without the tomato, mushrooms, onions, peppers or oregano they craved.

Nothing at all tasted like chicken.

"It's Weight Watchers in space," Jack complained as they hauled their cheap eatables back to the apartment.  "Every damned thing is a healthy option, even the snacky crap."

"Is it completely irrational to grudge not being able to eat myself to death?"

"About as irrational as wishing our peachy roof garden would get greenfly, weeds or poison ivy." 

A very nasty thought occurred to Jack.

"You think there's any alcohol in this beer?"

"Don't go there," Daniel advised him kindly, not willing to put money on it.  Nothing fit here, nothing worked the way it should or they wanted it to.  "Just...don't."

"You're right," Jack moaned.  "Bad enough you like it as much as I do."

"Is this it now?"  Daniel hefted a bulging eco-friendly produce bag in evidence of how lame life was under glassed alien skies.  "This is the highlight of our week?  Grocery shopping?  Bitching about grocery shopping?"

This was the particular thread in their new life he'd set out to pick up so there was no real excuse for unravelling over it now.  Except he felt like it. 

"What happened to the spirit of adventure?  Exploration?"

"Strictly curtailed to mealtimes from now on, buddy."

They limped back into the apartment more or less united in depression, wishing they were back in Kansas.

Jack hesitated at the kitchen counter, trying to calculate the odds of making it to the couch with a beer and without unpacking or stacking vegetables.

"It's up to you," Daniel said placidly.  "If you want the couch, you can check on the Portal where and how we're supposed to put all this stuff away without it killing us when we come to heat it or eat it.  And, in point of fact, if we're supposed to heat it before we eat it.  Some of it, I'm pretty sure we're not."

Jack took the beer and the veggies.  Daniel took a beer and the Portal.  They worked steadily, identifying meat, vegetables and other foodstuffs, checking and double-checking for safe storage conditions and temperature, safe cooking conditions and temperature, potential health risks if they screwed it up and cooked what they should have chilled, or vice versa.

Realising neither of them was going to remember all or even most of this, Daniel wrote it down on his small stash of paper with his purloined library fountain pen. 

He fumed audibly when Jack's bored, irritable prodding of the controls on the oven or microwave or whatever it was turned out to have a Portal-enhanced program for all this stuff, with pictures and recipes. 

It took a lot more irritable prodding -- from both of them, and for some time -- to get the pictures and recipes to go away again.

They got beers. 

They sat on the couch drinking their beers. 

One beer past his one-beer limit, Daniel was sadly sober and feeling the only way the drink would kill him would be if he drowned himself in a big vat of the stuff.

Without real beer there was little point to fake sports.  In the spirit of misery loving company, Jack put on the history channel for Daniel.

They hardly felt better about things when either the tower's internal environmental sensors or the Portal detected they couldn't see a damn thing for all the sunshine in the daytime in their south-facing apartment and helpfully darkened the windows, which they didn't know it could do, and couldn't work up the energy to figure out what or how to undo.

The little things.  Not the huge crises, everyone got it together for those.  It was the little things that wore you down.

It was uncertain which of them slumped first, whose shoulder touched whose, whose head rested first.  Neither of them pushed away.  Neither of them felt the need any longer for some pretence at being fine with the way things were working out for them. 

Daniel was only grateful for Jack's ready understanding and his solid friendship, only glad when an easy arm slid around his shoulders.

He'd done everything he could to fill his time, to exhaust himself into sleep each night, but in this quiet time, he missed his friends, he missed his life so badly he had to clench his jaw against an aching throat.

He didn't ask what they would do.  They both knew. 

They would adapt. 

They would beat some of the little things, be beaten by others. 

They would get by.

 

 

Daniel opened woozy eyes and blinked in confusion at the Portal, which was the wrong way up.  Also, the couch was warmer and decidedly more muscular than he remembered.

"There's alcohol in that beer!" he blurted out, betrayed.

"I jumped to the same conclusion around the time you nodded off and nose-dived into my lap."

"I only had two!"

"True.  It might have worked out better for you if I hadn't let you drink them for breakfast."

" _Let_  me?" Daniel objected.

"Slip of the tongue," Jack apologised.  "Comfortable?" he enquired politely.

Daniel gave him a big thumbs up.  "I am," he confided, yawning.  "I kind of like having you around.  You're not getting on my nerves half as much as I thought you would."

"Well, you're turning out to be twice as stubborn as I thought you were and you're too damned pushy and opinionated for a rookie roommate," Jack retorted, not exactly unmanned by Daniel's glowing testament to their friendship.

"Waiting for the downside here."

"A kind man would let you sleep this off," Jack mused.  "Me, I'm going to get you up off of your lazy, drunken ass so you can make my lunch." 

"Why am  _I_  cooking?  It's your stomach that's growling.  I'm just fine where I am."

"You're the one who needs something to soak up the alcohol and you're the one who insisted I turn into Chef Paul.  I figure you should lead by example.  Teach me some stuff.  Plus, I can tip your lazy, drunken ass on the floor any time I feel like it."

"You're evil.  What you mean is, you get to loll around watching while  _I_  do all the work.  That's smart, you know.  That's you all over.  You're an evil genius."

"Evil, huh?  You've lowered the bar on that one a tad since we got here."

"I've lowered the bar on everything since we got here," Daniel said darkly.  "I mean, come on!  Look at this place, Jack.  The Nox have a city in the sky too.  You remember the Nox?"

"I love the Nox."

"Me too.  You think the Nox have a  _mall_  in  _their_  city in the sky?"

"I sincerely doubt it."

"Me too.  Their city was mystical.  This one, we got funny vegetables."

"You're a cute drunk, Dr. Jackson."  Jack fondly ruffled Daniel's hair.

"Daniel," Daniel corrected him mournfully, rubbing his knees consolingly.  "It's just Daniel here, Colonel.  Just Daniel and Jack."

Jack's stomach growled.

"Want me to get that?" Daniel offered.  "I can slaughter a few vegetables, make some soup or something."

"Slaughter?"

"There's a big mallet in back of one of those cupboards.  I thought I'd want it for around the time I hit the anger stage in my five stages of grief over the keenly felt absence of coffee in my life.  It's multi-purpose, you know.  The mallet, I mean.  I was going to use it again for the bargaining stage."

"Use it how?"

"I was going to use it on you, get you to make me a gun."

"Slaughter it is," Jack snorted, helping Daniel to his feet, which turned out to be steadier than his train of thought.

"Pumpkin soup," he suggested.  "Only without the pumpkin.  And with the mallet."

"Why don't I get that for you?"

"The soup?"

"The mallet."

Daniel hesitated.  "If there should be any suspicion of a hangover later?"

"I'll club you like a seal."

"If I was the hugging type, I'd give you a big handshake for that," Daniel beamed, suffused with warmth and fellow feeling.

"At least a manly smack on the shoulder," Jack countered.

"At least."

"Or an actual hug."

"Get back to me when you've made the gun."

Jack settled for making the soup.  He delivered expertly on the mallet-related elements, mashing some fairly inoffensive vegetables without hesitation or mercy while Daniel ground spices vengefully.  They threw in some of the milk-like substance and nuked it.  The soup turned out pretty good, and with some useful alcohol-soaking properties.

Maybe too useful.  When Daniel started to think how long they'd keep doing this, looking for home in everything around them, looking for the familiar in taste, in touch, in the sight and sound of things, looking and failing to find it, he wanted another beer to dull it all down again.

He wanted Jack.

 

 

The days passed into weeks, the weeks passed into months.  It felt longer.  It was routine and grinding.  Passing the days seemed all there was.

Daniel had personally threatened all the students and been semi-adopted by the sweet old library staff, knew centuries of culture and the names of every Guide, the hours of the day and the days of the week, he could mostly tell what he was eating and he'd listened to Jack's 'Saimo to you' joke on Advocate Afarin half a dozen times.

He and Jack were getting by. 

Jack wouldn't take any long-haul freight or passenger commissions that would take him away from Nadereh.  He admitted it was frustrating Forouza but wouldn't give ground for now.

If he knew how much Daniel needed him just to be there, he never let on.  He was this constant in Daniel's life, steady and affectionate, sarcastic and understanding, funny and pissy and friendly.

It took the edge off days when they had to grocery shop or clean the john, do laundry or some other daunting domestic chore.

They each had their friends, or maybe acquaintances was the better description, their acquaintances at work.  Jack went out from time to time for a beer with his fellow pilots while Daniel dodged invitations from his fellow curators; experienced, involved parents, every one of them.  He had lunch with one or other of them every day but he went home after work.  No friend, not of his, not of Jack's, ever made it through the door of their apartment. 

Sam, Teal'c and the others were a cutting absence but they didn't speak of it.  Daniel, because he was used to dealing with loss, picking up and quietly getting on with things regardless of how he felt, and Jack, because he was good at ignoring it all.

Daniel worked hard to fill the long evenings, the weekends, with study, with conversation, with arguments.  With Jack. 

He didn't want to remember.  He didn't want to have time.  He didn't want to miss his friends, have to brace himself against the pain of it.  He didn't want to feel trapped or claustrophobic, too close to panicking at their isolation to give him any real peace.

He was out in the world now, but still unwilling to let it touch him.  He clung to Jack.  If he knew the full extent of his dependence on his friend, their mutual interdependence, he refused to back away from it.  As much as he needed from Jack, he tried to give.  And for so long as Jack was willing to give and to take, they grew closer, even closer than their enforced intimacy demanded.

Jack was more than willing.  He gave Daniel every possible excuse and opportunity to turn to him, his affection more open and easy than it had ever been.

Whether Daniel worked or not, studied or not, went out or not, every day started and ended the same.  Every night he fell asleep in his space, every morning he woke up in Jack's.

He was waking up not just with Jack but on him.  An arm, his leg, their faces close on the pillows.  And there was the natural physiological reaction to the intimacy.  

Every night he tried to keep to his own space while every morning...

He got tired of apologising. 

Jack got tired of him studying, but nowhere near as tired as Daniel was of never finding a way home.

Daniel came home from another frustratingly full-and-empty day at work to find Jack leaning lazily against the wall beside the open apartment door.

"We're eating out," Jack said lightly as he grabbed Daniel's heavy case of books and notes, tossed it inside and slammed the door.  "I scored tickets for jabbara, Nadereh versus Iraf.  It's the only game in town."

"Who, what, now?" Daniel's mental gears did some clashing.

"Jabbara.  It's tag for grown-ups."  Jack smiled beatifically.  "And my forenoon fare told me about a place we can get spaghetti and meatballs.  They call it hurdad."

"The place?"

"The meatballs."

"I guess I could take a few hours," Daniel admitted slowly, recognising another of those small, inevitable steps. 

He smiled quietly at Jack and went along with him willingly enough because Jack had really asked so little of him and this was something he wanted. 

He found himself genuinely interested when they emerged in the lower city to join the good-natured crowd streaming towards the south entrances to the arena.  There were families, couples, singles and groups, a welcome, pleasantly excited mix of genders and ages.

"I think we may have found the national game," he observed brightly to Jack, looking around him interestedly as they followed a broad, encircling utilitarian avenue around to their section of seating. 

There were rich food smells all around them, sweet and savoury, and Daniel couldn't resist. Abandoning the idea of a faux-Italian supper, he and Jack found places at a busy stall, dug in to heaped platters of hot chunky meats with tangy sauces and creamy dips, drank several cups of fresh, zesty fruit juice with sugared pastries and finally took mountainous ices around to their seats.

They settled down perfectly amicably, Jack intensely focused on the rival teams warming up, taunting and psyching each other out down on the arena floor, while Daniel was mostly watching the spectators off it.  The friendly energy of the crowd was appealing to him, with their lively chants, rhythmic applause and stamping feet.

When Jack claimed Daniel's wandering attention and earnestly explained to him the rules and the point of this game he'd never seen, Daniel was hard put to keep a straight face.  He took refuge behind his ice cream of unknown origin and watched everything through eager eyes.

The aim of the game appeared to be simple.  A raider from one team launched into enemy territory to pursue, capture and 'count coup' by touching a rival on the right shoulder. 

The vivid, figure-hugging futuristic uniforms sported by each team had a target of sorts there on the shoulder, an insignia that appeared to represent their city. 

When a touch was scored, the scoring team's insignia flared on the enormous scoreboard but they didn't earn their point until the raider had eluded capture and was safely back on home territory. 

Jack was absolutely disgusted Nadereh was symbolised by a little red flower while Daniel looked at the spectators with fresh interest, picking out the many who wore the same marking somewhere on their clothing, or carried banners and flags of allegiance to their city.

Jabbara was fast-paced, skilful and reasonably non-violent for a contact sport, with men and women competing on both teams without consideration of gender.  Jack got into the game while Daniel followed it through the hoarse, excited cheering or the crushed devastation of the home crowd.  He couldn't remember a moment when he consciously looked at Jack, but he found such raw and open power, such emotion blazing in his friend's rapt face he couldn't look away.

He was helplessly transfixed when all at once a roar went up, the heavens opened and a sea of red flowers came raining down.  At one with the triumphant, chanting crowd, Jack unexpectedly swung around and his deep eyes were heat and light.

Daniel felt a queer, stuttering pain and reached out, only to second-guess the impulse and draw back in some confusion as the tips of his fingers touched Jack's face.

"Let's beat the crowds," Jack urged and Daniel saw the sense in it, hurrying with him down the steps of their section, then out of the arena, barely yards ahead of the seething, celebratory tide. 

Daniel was impressed by the discipline and care taken by the crowd, the patient falling into line as waiting arena officials efficiently filtered them into the south tower elevators, every car full but not overcrowded.  They were finally carried out onto their floor by a burst of neighbours they'd never really seen or spoken to before, replied to a friendly greeting here and there, Daniel feeling just a little more part of things as they made it through their own door.

"I had a good time," he chatted to Jack as he picked up his discarded bag from the floor and swung it up onto the dining table as he passed, headed for the closet and a welcome change out of his work uniform.  "Want to try the hurdad tomorrow?" he called out over his shoulder as Jack secured the apartment door.  "Or maybe later in the week?  How about Elat?  I could use something to get me through the pain of another staff meeting." 

His feet were comfortably bare on chill stone, underwear loose and slipping down over his hips, arms tangled in his unbuttoned, falling shirt when a strong, naked body pressed against his, a muscular arm slid around his waist and his cock was taken in a cool, hard hand.

His heart climbed his throat and his body slammed. 

He thought, this is  _Jack_. 

Jack hungrily fisting his cock in long, wrenching strokes that spurted quick heat on his thighs.

"Oh, my God," he whimpered in shock, falling back against Jack, unable to feel much of anything besides the tightness in his chest and the implacable hand between his legs. 

Then Jack turned him around and touched his face, stroking him tenderly from temple to throat.

"You have to know by now that I care for you." 

Jack's eyes were all heat and light.

"I care for you too." 

Daniel felt completely unreal and his heart was in his throat.  He only looked on wide-eyed when Jack came very close to him and their lips touched, a feathering brush of firm softness deepening into a first, questioning kiss. 

"You didn't know I was watching you all this time?" Jack asked softly, bringing their lips together again. 

He held Daniel very close to him and Daniel shut his eyes, couldn't think at all, felt again that stuttering pain, held on tight to Jack as the world reeled around him and he was kissed strong and hard.  Jack knew precisely how, gently taking Daniel down with him on the bed to kiss him passionately, expressively.  Certainly.

Daniel's mind flamed away beneath Jack's terrible, exquisite mouth and roughly gentle hands until he was hollowed out from wanting and being wanted and his blood thumped heavy and low. 

Jack's weight shifted, Daniel's legs were lifted over broad shoulders, a cock like a club probing slickly between his thighs.  He felt a centring nudge between the cheeks of his ass, a growing, invasive pressure his body fought at first, a burst of pain as his muscle gave and then Jack's cock driving sleekly in.

Jack moaned through gritted teeth, the sweat beading his face as his heavy balls pressed hotly into Daniel's skin. 

" _Daniel_." 

The intensity of feeling in his voice stunned Daniel even more than having Jack inside him.  Making love to him.  Making this...real. 

Jack tightened his grip, bucking hungry hips that pistoned his cock in fast, shallow strokes. 

They didn't, couldn't fit. 

Daniel was stretched so wide he felt every pulse of blood in Jack's cock as intensely as he felt the heat of Jack's skin against his own.  His clenching muscle moved sluggishly, constantly pulled by the hard flesh moving inside of him. 

Jack's forceful thrusts jolted Daniel's trembling body back and forth beneath him on the bed in a pounding, rhythmic creak of springs.  His strokes slowed, lengthened and deepened over time. 

He was enjoying Daniel's body, wanting their lovemaking to be good for them both, trying to be generous, and he needed for this to last.  He took as much care for Daniel as he took pleasure in the hard, demanding thrust of his cock. 

And he was never still; kissing, licking, even biting at Daniel's thighs, quick fingers stroking, petting and soothing as he held Daniel's gaze, showing him all the love he could muster, fearless and bright in his eyes. 

Though his mind had seized, slowly, gradually, Daniel's body gave in to being opened up to Jack's tenderising cock.  Relentlessly, sensuously rubbed inside and out, finally he lost his sense of unreality, found his rhythm, found his voice, set the pace of their heated fucking, his arching back and melting hips helping Jack in. 

When the rippling, exhilarated waves of passionate, masculine sex weren't enough feeling for him, he reached imperatively for Jack, desperately needing to hold on to him.  To believe in this -- in Jack -- when everything else was so wrong for him.

All of that sliding heat and weight abruptly shifted, stabbing impossibly deep in Jack's eager lunge to meet him.  Daniel convulsed, electric as liquid heat pumped inside him, crying out as Jack found his mouth so they were kissing as they came, trembling with the force of love that was almost pain.

 

 

Daniel stood with an idle shoulder against the slim white metal arch framing the kitchen window, sipping fragrant tea, missing coffee, watching the sun rise to fill the clear pearly grey sky. 

Hands reached around him, one snagging the teacup from his loose grip, the other curving intimately over his hip.  Through the thin fabric of his sleep pants he felt sharp hips and a hungry cock hard against his ass, the warmth of skin on the backs of his thighs.

"Come back to bed," Jack growled, husky despite the tea he'd stolen.  He took hold of both Daniel's hips, closing all the distance between them to sway their bodies persuasively in the rhythm of sex.  "Time to pick up where we left off."

"No," Daniel said quietly.  "I don't think so."

"Cold feet?" Jack was teasing, complacent, a foot arching to rub over Daniel's bare toes.

"I can't think about this," Daniel said more quietly still.  "I've tried to make sense of this for hours and I -- I can't do it.  I never thought about being with you like this."  He took a breath.  "I don't know that I want it."

Jack turned him around, hands at his waist now, hips crowding his, refusing to back off, his face close, his heat everywhere on Daniel.  "You wanted it last night."

"I wanted you," Daniel confided with naïve honesty. "I wanted to be close with you.  The sex -- it all happened too fast.  I didn't think..."

"You think too much," Jack interrupted, his hands finding Daniel's face, touching him with tenderness.  "We were good together, Daniel.  Be honest about that.  We made love for a long time, we were good together and you were with me all of that time.  We both came."

Daniel put his palms flat against Jack's chest, touching him at the same time he was holding him back.  Confusion was layering down around him, smothering his ability to think, to function. 

"You knew exactly what you were doing to me, Jack."  Daniel's voice dropped, stiff and clumsy with these pained admissions.  "You knew I didn't have experience.  The way you touched me, what you did?" he challenged.  "What kind of choice did you give me?  I wasn't ready for you to just take hold of me, jerk me off like that, and I think you know it." 

He wasn't trying to lay blame for what had happened between them, it wasn't about that.  He only needed to find his way clear of this muffling stupor of incomprehension.  He hardly knew how to say what he was feeling but didn't see he had a choice other than to try.  The closeness he'd wanted so badly with Jack was falling away and he had to get things straight between them.  If they were to go on.

"Jack, you took control of what was happening between us as much as I gave it up.  Can you be honest about that?" he urged.

Jack didn't want to be honest -- talk -- about anything, but he wouldn't give Daniel up.  He was willing to work for what he wanted. 

"I pushed, sure, but I wanted you.  I made that clear, and you consented."

"I'm not angry."  Daniel knew he wasn't expressing himself well, he was struggling to say anything at all, but really, how could anyone adequately communicate this confusion?  This sense of having been outside of himself?  "I know what I did." 

Jack was refusing to get mad.  Jack was holding on to Daniel, being gentle with him because he was upset.  Daniel was this important to him, so very important  Jack was taking care.

"You reached out to me, you know?" he reminded Daniel.  "I waited for you to do just that."

"I know," Daniel whispered, understanding the queer, stuttering pain in his chest, his blind faith, his reaching out, needing to be close with Jack -- all of that was his love.  "But Jack, you're my friend.  You're a man and my friend and you know I didn't think of -- of this.  I'm married."

"You're with me," Jack flared, more harshly than he intended but not about to let go or back down, not for a second.  Daniel was this important to him.

"Making love to me the way you did, you made sure of that."  Daniel stared into Jack's eyes, fighting past his instinctive reticence to show some part of what was going on with him, willing Jack to understand.  "You made sure of me, Jack," he said seriously.  "You made sure.  You know what we did, how far we went, what it -- what it meant."

"You love me," Jack asserted intensely, pulling Daniel tightly into his body, arms engulfing him in a strong, caring embrace.

"I gave up on my wife." 

Daniel hated the way his voice caught and broke.  He shifted restlessly, broke away to pace the floor, not wanting to be propped up by Jack.

"You want me with you and that's a choice you made for both of us," he said gravely.  "I can't change what we did, I can't hide from it, and I didn't have a chance."

"Daniel..." Jack tried to object.

"You changed both our lives.  That's what I can't get past." 

Oh, God.  His voice was shaking.  How much worse -- how much more emotional could this get? 

"I don't have experience, Jack." 

Not of being with someone, not like this, laid bare and cornered by four walls, loving the one who meant everything to him. 

"I'll take care of you.  I always will," Jack promised Daniel with an almost frightening certainty.

"You're too used to having your way, Jack," Daniel sighed heavily, wondering if Jack wasn't missing his point so much as he was ignoring it.  "You push too hard and this is one time you've screwed up.  If you thought I was ready for this you would have asked me.  You would have given me time to think, decide what my feelings are for you and if I wanted to act on them."

Jack was smugly sure of the answer to this.  He'd been inside Daniel, knew exactly what he could do to him, what he could make him do and want and feel.  He knew Daniel loved him because his body, his responses to Jack had completely betrayed him.

Daniel walked up close to Jack, close enough to get in his face.  Jack reached out for him as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if he had rights to do this, to have and hold.

"Did it never occur to you making love to me like this would fuck me in the head as well as the ass?" Daniel demanded, getting some of his fight back.  "I'm not ready.  Not for the feelings, not for the sex, not for giving up on our lives or my wife, not for committing to being part of a -- a  _couple_ with you.  Making me come doesn't change that.  Right now, I can't get past it, I can't make it real, I can't think." 

"Didn't we start this discussion with me telling you that you think too much?" Jack enquired, balancing his butt on the narrow windowsill so he could hold Daniel between his long, lazy legs as well as his arms.  He didn't choose to hide the fact he was getting more and more turned on just looking at Daniel, having him close.

"If you tell me to come back to bed, so help me!" Daniel glowered, stubbornly resisting Jack's pull.

"I wish you could accept this for what it is," Jack complained.  "Just this one time,  Daniel, go with it.  Please.  Everything was clear when we were making love.  You went hard enough for that."  His expression was getting pissed around the edges, sarcasm creeping into his tone.  "But no, you have to go analyse the crap out of it."

Daniel might have difficulty seeing himself and his place in life, but his vision was 20/20 when it came to Jack, so accustomed to command, to control, he wasn't used to and mostly couldn't accept being questioned.  The exception Jack made for Daniel, that was unique.  It wasn't in Jack's nature to discuss or explain, he went after what he wanted with focused, determined discipline.  He just committed and did what he needed, relying on his formidable talent -- and his charm -- to let him get away with the fallout. 

A piece or two of this puzzle clicked into place for Daniel, beginning to make sense of his place in Jack's life.  "If I just went along with this, you'd be disappointed," he retorted.

"No," Jack contradicted definitely.

"Yes," Daniel insisted.  "If you really wanted someone you could push around, give you whatever you wanted, you'd have fallen for Sam the way your alternate did." 

Daniel loved his friend, but she didn't have the independent streak he did.  Sam was dependent in a way Daniel could barely comprehend, needing her defined place in the Air Force, the team -- it was part of her identity, how she functioned.  And at times, it made her if not precisely passive, then at least biddable.  Obedient.

He had to smile at this.  Those weren't terms he could apply to himself.

"You want me to stand up to you," he informed Jack with more confidence even than he was feeling.

"No."  Jack's hands cupped Daniel's ass, pressing him against a heated, aggressive hard-on.  "That's where I want you," he whispered, taking a soft, tempting bite at Daniel's throat.

"The only way you'll get me back into bed with you is if you talk me into it," Daniel whispered back, resolutely ignoring his physical responsiveness, determined to make sense of this -- not just the sex, but their emotions, the practicalities and possibilities, the logistics of building a relationship with this man, his friend. 

Because if he failed, he lost everything.  If this didn't work out, he'd be completely alone.

"How about I just love you?" Jack crossed his arms over the small of Daniel's back in a demanding, guarding embrace, burying a warm face against his throat with a soft, murmuring sound of happiness that shook Daniel into holding him as close as he wanted.

 

 

Jack didn't agree with most of what Daniel had said to him this morning, but he had listened. 

He'd listened closely enough it brought him unannounced to the library in late afternoon to find Daniel alone among the books.  Jack approached him quietly, obliquely, standing where he couldn't be seen. 

What Daniel had told him about his work here -- that had to have been the edited highlights.  What would interest Jack, make him laugh.  Small, positive things Daniel had heard or been told by the library staff or the students.  Tidbits about the apparently fascinating and endless history of Shonagon, how this place and the people worked.  Anything to make Jack believe Daniel was, if not on top of the world, then at least functioning.

Trying to find some context for the fears Daniel had expressed about making love with him, building a relationship with him, Jack was here to see for himself if Daniel really was functioning.

His first impression wasn't great.

Daniel was taking books from a trolley and putting them in their place on the shelves.  From time to time, he would pull out a lone book or several of them from a shelf, shuffle them around, and put them back in the proper order.  He did this with a weary, focused patience that made Jack grit his teeth. 

This monotony had nothing to do with the person Daniel was, no place it touched on the research, the explorations he lived for.

If Jack wasn't exactly embracing life as a Shon Pilot, if he wasn't thrilled by it, he was at least flying free.  He had training, he had skills, and even if he had outgrown this as his life, taken a different path years before, he could live with it.

He wasn't so sure Daniel could. 

"Hey," he called softly, walking forward.  He had to smile when Daniel lit up unguardedly at the sight of him.  Had to push it, leaning in to steal a swift, jaunty kiss.  "Counting coup," he teased with a grin, ignoring Daniel's frustrated sputter in favour of taking a book from the trolley.  He turned it over in his hands.  The name, the title -- they meant nothing to him. 

"This is all there is, huh?" he asked.

Daniel took the book back from him, hunkered down to a lower shelf, scanned the spines of the books there, then slid it home. 

"Pretty much," he said in a carefully neutral tone, straightening back up.

"How do you get from this to archaeology?" Jack asked straight-forwardly.

"Realistically?" Daniel shrugged it off.  "I don't."

This was what Jack was afraid of.  What he was here to figure out.

"Too much history?" He looked around at miles and miles of shelves.  Afarin had said -- and Daniel had reminded him at length -- the Shon were an old people.  "It'll take you too long to figure all this out?"  He could hardly imagine that to be the case.  Apart from his unquenchable gung ho enthusiasm for the old stuff, Daniel was frighteningly clever.  And fast. 

"No-o," Daniel drawled.  "It's already been figured out.  Packaged, rendered 3D in multi-media, interactive and delivered right to your desktop or living room by Portal."  He half-smiled at Jack.  "You should stay awake and watch the history channel with me some day.  It's very instructional."

"Sounds ominous."

"They don't have dig sites," Daniel said conversationally, wheeling his trolley along to the next section of shelves.  "They have theme parks, history trails and dramatic re-creations for the kids.  We've been to one of them.  Guide Zinat's palace.  You remember?  The park, the sand pails, the pets?"

"I thought Roshak said you could make the jump, that he'd put a word in for you at the university?"

"He did," Daniel acknowledged placidly.  "The problem is, the Shon did too good a job preserving their past and too many scholars worked for too many centuries adding to the historical record."

"It's all been done?" Jack hazarded.

"And recorded ad infinitum."  Daniel lightly ran ironic fingers over the spines of the nearest books.

"I can't believe you're out of options."

Daniel's expression shuttered.

"Spit it out," Jack kindly advised the world's worst liar.  "I have ways of making you talk and most of them involve getting you naked.  Right here."

"There is one possible option.  A long-shot at best.  The oldest era," Daniel owned up reluctantly, cravenly sidestepping the issue of nakedness.  "Shon pre-history, if you will.  A time of, um, myth and legends about the Ancestors -- the Ancients -- creating this world."

"There's a catch here," Jack said decidedly.  "I can tell.  If this doesn't come ready packaged with Portal specials, roller coasters, Playstation and lunch-box tie-ins like the rest of it, there has to be a catch."

"The creation myths about the Ancients tend to be focused on the south-eastern continent of the World Below.  Oshnar.  It's kind of off the beaten track," Daniel said cagily.

"How far off?"

"It's jungle, Jack.  Dense, uninhabited tropical rainforest."

"Dense enough no one ever found anything down there, which would be why those myths are still legends, huh?"

"The Shon did find something," Daniel admitted in a flattened tone.  "Timber."

"Ah."  Jack, not a subscriber to National Geographic just to stack up his closet, winced.

"Oshnar was decimated to fuel the first industrial age," Daniel told him.  "It's all in the historical record.  Deforestation, strip mining, butchering the land, tearing out every natural and mineral resource.  Thousands of labourers died in the harsh climate and conditions there -- it was the start of the devastating ecological disasters that forced the Shon to reassess their viability as a species and led them to their re-birth as the nice people we're stuck with today."

"And all of this is a problem how?"

"The Shon are very touchy about Oshnar.  It's a constant, nagging organic reminder of everything they most hate about themselves and their past, everything they've worked so hard to overcome.  It took them centuries to re-seed the rainforest and repair the ecosystem."

Daniel had a genuine talent for answering a question as fully and completely as possible without actually saying anything.

And he wasn't done yet.

"The skies are getting pretty crowded over the rest of the planet but there's not a single city over Oshnar.  It's more than a point of pride to the Shon that the land remain untouched -- the entire continent is a living memorial to those losses and lessons of the past, a deep-seated part of their cultural identity."

The sixty-four thousand dollar question here...the  _point_ of all this babbling?

"You tell me, Jack," Daniel invited softly.  "What odds would you give a grant application for a long-shot excavation by an upstart alien archaeologist who's here for five minutes and wants to spit on your national grave?"

"If the archaeologist is you?" Jack grinned, liking the way this was sounding.

"I'm not ready to try."

"I thought you were always ready to try?" Jack said suggestively, easing a little closer in the hopes of goading Daniel into working off some of this enormous sexual tension he was supposed to ignore.

"I've been looking for ways to get us home.  Not giving in to this.  I haven't found any references to the Stargate, to the Asgard, to Thor or any of the gods or myths of the Norse pantheon," Daniel said soberly.  "No duplicates of the device that brought us here, no Ancient repository of knowledge, no avenues of appeal or legal recourse against the refusal of the government to accept liability in trapping us here, not even sinister rumours the Shon are hiding a secret stash of advanced technology from us."

"Are you going to?"

Daniel shook his head mutely, then abruptly walked away.  He was aware of Jack hard on his heels but couldn't bring himself to speak for a minute. 

"Knowing it and accepting it are two different things," he said angrily.  "I have to live here.  I know that.  I have to function in this society, among these people.  But that's not the same as building a life here.  Building a career."

"Moving out to the sticks is the same as giving up on home in your book?"  It was an admission Jack needed to hear from Daniel before he could make it himself.  Because Daniel  _never_  gave up. 

Daniel stopped double-timing it as suddenly as he'd started, swinging around looking edgy and uncoordinated.  "And you," he said tightly, getting red in the face.  "Giving up on you."

Accepting this unexpected opening as so much manna from heaven, Jack smartly closed in and acquired a lock on his agitated archaeologist. 

"How'd you figure that?" he asked, making with the soothing tone and, when Daniel failed to put up much of a fight, the healing hands.

"No cities over Oshnar, remember?" Daniel reminded him sharply.  "No cities, no work.  No work, no credit.  There's no place for you, Jack.  I'd be alone out there.  And how is that any better than bombing in a relationship with you and having to move on anyway?"

"That's not going to happen," Jack objected, a few pennies finally dropping.

"It could," Daniel countered with quiet intensity.  "There are no guarantees here.  None.  All we have to count on is this."  His hands came up to grip Jack's arms fiercely.  "Us, Jack.  Friendship.  Trust."

"We're not going home, are we?" Jack said gently, wanting Daniel to know he was getting it.

"Knowing it..." Daniel said unsteadily.

"Is not the same as accepting it," Jack finished for him.

"We've been here almost three months.  Our friends aren't coming for us.  They don't even know to look.  So far as they know, we died in that accident."

"I know." 

Jack had known for a while.  Maybe from the start.  They were cut out of their existence so cleanly, the trap was sprung so perfectly, there was no evidence trail to follow.  The device had been intended to fool Ancients, after all.

"We can't gate home, we can't fly home, we can't find our allies or send a message.  There's nothing.  Nothing and no one."  Daniel tried to smile.  "Just this.  Just...us."

"You're holding to your position that sex, no matter how hot it is, might screw it up?"

"I might screw it up.  It's what I do."  Daniel's smile tightened to the point Jack winced for him.  "It's what I've done so far."

"Have a little faith, Daniel," Jack sighed, managing to turn his hold into a hug.

This whole thing was just classic Daniel.  Loving Jack, wanting to be with him enough he was ready to suck it up and turn his brain to oatmeal indefinitely down here in Deadsville, but wanting him too much to risk letting him down or losing him. 

Bottom line, what Jack saw as a win-win situation, Daniel saw as no-win.  Walls closing in all around him.

Jack pulled him into a kiss, not to prove a point, but because Daniel really looked like he needed it. 

It was a quiet kiss, much more about the love than the sex.  Jack showing Daniel he was with him.  His unforced tenderness touched Daniel, drew him in to kiss back.  A hand came up to Jack's shoulder, the other hooked around his elbow.  Daniel's stiff mouth relaxed to rub against his.

There were answers here.  Maybe more than Jack was looking for.  He had Daniel, that was for sure.  He had his way.  He guessed it was for the last time, though, because he got some of what Daniel was trying to tell him. 

If it was up to Daniel, if he had only himself to consider, that grant application would already be in.  A treasure trove of untouched Ancient artefacts? 

Daniel was  _so_  gone.

Only, there was Jack. 

Which meant Daniel was stuck here.  He couldn't make a decision on his own he knew would affect them both and more, would cost Jack.  Even before Jack got him into bed and made him wake up to what was really going on between them.

Daniel wasn't angry with Jack.  But he was disappointed.  Outmanoeuvred. 

It should not have come to that, not when Jack loved him.  Too late for Jack to apologise or even explain it was him being in much the same headspace as Daniel that had made him act the way he did.  It was said and done.  

He could only start to make it right.

"We have options, you know," he murmured comfortably, reaching up to smooth his fingers through Daniel's hair.  "We've got this whole world to explore, city by city if we want to.  We've got the national grave to spit on -- every expedition needs a good pilot." 

Daniel was listening to Jack, which was good.    He also wasn't backing off, which was better. 

"We could get passage on one of those ships at the spaceport, check out the planets Shonagon trades with, see if we can't find one where the people aren't quite so nice or well regulated and you can get down in the dirt," Jack suggested.  "We could even stick it out here in Nadereh if you need to."

The magic word was 'we'.  Showing some semblance of consideration was getting Jack a lot farther with Daniel than the really great sex had.

"It's not  _so_  bad," Daniel confided, his face softening into a tentative smile.  "Maybe I exaggerated a bit.  Roshak and the others let me get away with murder, they're so happy to have new blood.  I, er, I spend more time reading than working."

"You're not ready to quit on them, huh?" Jack asked understandingly, reading between the lines without difficulty.

"They've been so kind."  Daniel looked embarrassed.  "I don't want to let them down."

"Don't sweat it," Jack said indulgently.  "If you weren't so susceptible, you wouldn't like me either."

Refusing to rise to the bait, Daniel relaxed into an impish grin and led Jack back through the shelves towards his office. 

"Would you really come pitch a tent with me in the rainforest?" he asked over his shoulder as he climbed the low spiral staircase.

"Will it get Portal?" Jack asked anxiously, looking appreciatively around the office.  "Nice," he commented lightly, eyeing the large, accommodating library table, the sheltering book cases and frosted panels above.  There was a certain ambience he liked.  A footfall on the metal stairs would give them plenty of warning if they got into anything and...

"Jack!" Daniel snapped, punching him none too gently in the arm.

"Hey!"

"You're drooling," Daniel accused him indignantly.

"Just indulging in a little fantasy," Jack explained in injured tones, planting his butt on the edge of the table.

"You think I'd...here?" Daniel blinked.

"I think 'you' everywhere," Jack grinned.

"I don't know what to say."  Daniel backed up and sat on the table too.  He was looking flushed again.

"Last night -- I went too far." Jack crossed his arms uncomfortably over his chest.  "Too fast for you."

"You're not sorry," Daniel recognised.

Jack wouldn't even pretend.

"I am.  Not in the way you might think."  Daniel shot him a quick, sidelong look.  "Being with you..."

"Making love," Jack corrected.

"Making love," Daniel repeated dutifully, hardly sounding as if he knew what the words meant.  He shook his head, turning in on in himself, fingers futzing nervously with the edge of the table. 

When Jack stopped him but didn't take his hand away, Daniel looked around at him, still troubled.

"Having sex with  _you_.  You of all people."

"Me of all people?"

"Jack O'Neill.   _Colonel_ Jack O'Neill."

"That's never meant a whole lot to you."

"But it does to you."

Jack shrugged it off in much the way Daniel had shrugged off his own life, his real life, earlier.  "I'll live."

"How...long?" Daniel asked uncertainly.  "You said last night you'd been watching me for a while."

Jack wasn't going to lose the ground he'd clawed back by lying now.

"Since I brought you back from Abydos."

Daniel was stunned into silence.

"If not for the accident, us being here, I might never..." Jack muttered.  His rank, his responsibilities, the oath he took, those did mean something to him.  He hoped he could've kept it in his pants.  "For the record, you're right on the money on that 'me of all people' thing.  Why me.  It's a question I've asked myself a lot over the past couple of years."

"I thought you were still in love with Sara."

"Nothing can change what happened between Sara and me.  We couldn't go back.  We were smart enough in the end to figure that out."  Jack put his hand on Daniel's face and took his first full-on look, slow and sexy, looking his fill.  "And you..."  He smiled.  "You were already under my skin." 

Too young, too pretty, too trusting, too quick to turn to him and too much a man for Jack to be able to ignore or rationalise his attraction.  He knew what he wanted as well as he knew the odds of getting it, even though Daniel loved him.  Or maybe because of it.  Daniel's faith was not something to be discarded lightly.  It meant something -- a great deal -- to both of them.

Despite their growing intimacy sharing the apartment, the bed, Jack had held back until he was sure he was reading Daniel right.  He was weeks past the wishful thinking stage and had still held back until Daniel consciously reached out to him.

He was still wrong and he wanted to know why.

"You've been all over me these past weeks, Daniel.  God knows you question everything else...why not that?"

Daniel seemed mesmerised by the look as much as the touch against his face.  "You could do it here," he breathed.  "Have sex with me here and now."

Jack pulled an unresisting Daniel to his feet and against his body, turning them to face the table, crowding Daniel sensuously to the edge of it, putting a persuasive hand over his hip. 

"Right here," he agreed, leaning into Daniel enough they each put down a hand on the satin grey wood to balance themselves. 

He thought he heard Daniel gulp.

"Right now."

"Oh, God."

Jack bit oh, so softly into Daniel's throat. 

If he pushed only a little harder, he could have Daniel.  Here and now.  Take him down onto this table, just like this.  Just this way.  He knew what he could do to Daniel.  He knew if he pushed, Daniel would let him.

"Maturity  _sucks_ ," he sighed, putting Daniel down with all the good grace he could muster, hopping back up onto the table next to him and keeping his hands more or less to himself.  "We already established I can do that to you," he offered by way of explanation for this extraordinary lapse into selflessness.  "Get your motor running whenever I want."

"I wouldn't put it that way."

Daniel sounded faint and faraway.  Jack wasn't sure if it was because of the near-miss sex or the newfound maturity thing.  Either way, Daniel was glad to get to sit and look at the wall in silence for a few minutes, try to get his breath back.

"I think you should make the next move," Jack suggested, regretting his rash promise to be there for Daniel forever and ever.  Less than one day in, being big about looking out for him was already proving to be horribly inconvenient.

"I think so too."

Responding to this absently vocalised distress signal, Jack put out a hand and waved it in front of Daniel's eyes until he jumped, focused and rejoined him in the here and now.  "Better?" he enquired.

"Thank you."

"You really weren't prepared for this, were you?" Jack recognised ruefully.  "All these weeks of waking up humping my leg, if you weren't coming on to me, do you mind telling me what you  _were_  doing?"

" _Humping_?"

"Don't know how I kept my hands off you until now," Jack insisted defiantly.

"What  _is_  this?" Daniel bleated.

"What you wanted," Jack retorted.  "Building a relationship.  Me, I thought we were doing great with that the past couple of years, let alone the past couple of months or so."

"I thought so too," Daniel confessed in a rush.

"Until last night?"

"Until last night."

"I know you don't have a lot of experience."  Jack found the wall ahead as much a comfort as Daniel did.  "Of sex, let alone the rest of it.  I...admit I didn't sufficiently factor that in to my thinking, give it the weight I should have." 

Jack couldn't tell if he'd completely mortified Daniel with this.  He wasn't talking and Jack wasn't looking.  The wall ahead was propping them both up. 

"It hasn't been a big part of your life." 

It was kind of a shitty thing to say to a married man, but that didn't stop it being true.  

"You didn't see Sha'uri coming at you either."

Jack didn't know how else to put it.  Daniel didn't need to hear Jack's suspicions and surmises about the state of his marriage; he'd lived it.

"Am I really so naïve?" Daniel wanted to know.

"Yeah.  Yeah, you are."  It was part of Daniel's charm.  Jack valued his appealing innocence even if it had contributed to the current impasse.  "But you're also really,  _really_  distracted by other things.  Old things."

Daniel surprised him.  "I wasn't fair to you this morning," he said seriously.  "When I said I don't know if I want this.  The way I, er...the way we..."  He had to stop and clear some obstruction in his throat.  "It was fairly obvious what I wanted when I slept with you."

There was little Jack could say in response without patronising Daniel or sounding like a bad romance novel.

"What I can't comprehend is what  _you_  want," Daniel continued.

"I thought that was fairly obvious when I jumped you."

"No, I mean you're the  _last_  person who'd take being ripped out of his life like this so  _calmly_ ," Daniel argued emotionally.  "I've seen you, at least your robot you.  You  _hate_  this kind of disruption, this -- this loss of control over your environment, the choices you can make.  You're Colonel Jack O'Neill, team leader of SG-1, the go-to guy at Stargate Command.  That's who you are.  That's your identity."  Daniel was genuinely baffled by the seeming contradiction.  "And yet here you are.  You almost seem  _happy_."

"You can't believe you make that much of a difference to me?" Jack deflected with a question, not an answer.

"Was friendship not enough?"

"Not for either of us," Jack said firmly.  "After last night, the way it was between us, you should know it."

"I've been moving towards you," Daniel confided painfully, slumping.  "For a while now.  This is what you've been trying to tell me.  It was me.  You were reacting to me, to what I was making it so clear to you I wanted.  Only...I wouldn't let myself see it."  His bewilderment was palpable.  "I couldn't see it."

"For me, it's a fair trade," Jack said honestly.  "The SGC's go-to guy could never do this."  He took Daniel's face between his hands, drew him into a lingering kiss he leaned gratefully into.  "I hate that the accident happened, I hate that my life as I know it is gone, but would I give  _anything_  to undo it?  Anything _?"_ He kissed Daniel a second time.  _"_ A few weeks ago my answer might have been different, but I'm certain now.  I wouldn't give this.  I wouldn't give up you," he promised, his sincerity hitting Daniel hard.  "For everything I hate about this place and this life, the bottom line is one I  _can_  live with.  I get to be with you here."

"Jack," Daniel whispered, shaken to the core, his sensitive fingers coming to rest intimately against Jack's cheek.

"That is the bottom line, Daniel," Jack stated briskly.  "For everything else, we have options."

"Let's go home," Daniel asked, unable to inject any confidence into it.

"Home, home?"

"Home here."

"You need to talk some more?" Jack bravely managed to not only avoid cringing visibly, but to sound reasonably upbeat.

"I need..."  Words failing him, Daniel kissed Jack on the mouth with an oddly sweet intensity.

As moves went, it was a solid effort.  Jack responded with so much enthusiasm he pushed Daniel off the table and it was only by luck they landed on their feet to lurch into the low wall locked at hip and lip.  The frosted panels rocked, creaking so alarmingly Daniel pulled away from Jack as if he'd been burned.

Jack was wise enough to take prompt action to curtail the incipient freak-out.

In some place beyond speech, Daniel could only follow like a lamb as he was expertly extracted from the library, fortunately bereft of patrons as well as staff.  Jack didn't think Daniel took a breath until they were on the elevator headed for the main concourse of Nadereh.

This was a very risky strategy.  Daniel had so much lead-in time to think about having sex with Jack he could not so much lose the mood as snap out of it.  Then they'd be right back to meaningful conversation.

The odds started to stack up against them getting some.

First they had to get in line for a subway car to the south tower and then they had to share with residents from other floors in their building, even a neighbour who was going to be walking them home.  Crowded into a corner of the car for the short ride, acutely self-conscious, Daniel chose to stare at his feet as if he had the word 'HORNY' tattooed across his forehead.

On the elevator, the neighbour was in a chatty mood.  She was an older lady, a motherly, friendly soul who wanted to know how the boys were settling in, how they liked the city, had they enjoyed jabbara last night, was there anything she or her partner could do for them?  She kept this up as they got off on their floor and walked down the hallway. 

If Daniel couldn't look at Jack, at least he couldn't do any hard thinking or overt panicking for her yammering.  Jack had to promise the old dear to turn up for supper some night to get rid of her at the door to their apartment. 

Daniel fell through it.

Then he marched over to the bed with an uncoordinated, completely endearing determination and was out of his shirt before Jack was out of the kitchen.

"Whoah!" Jack called, wanting to help with buttons and things.

Pants around his knees, Daniel was having none of it.  He discarded clothes, his shoes and socks, and then, bravely, his underwear.  He got in the bed, under the blankets and hitched over to his usual side.  Then he didn't know what to do with his hands or the  _unbearable_  delay while Jack undressed and fought not to let his sense of humour get the better of him. 

Jack got into the bed without haste and was hard put not to laugh when Daniel's predominant emotion was relief. 

Unfortunately, having screwed his courage to the sticking place, Daniel was unreasonably annoyed when Jack failed to jump him instantly and get it over with.  This drove him to take action, planting himself -- a trifle irritably, it had to be said -- on top of Jack.

Daniel was instantly diverted, his eyes widening at the feel of all this  _skin_  against his own.   How well the planes of their bodies fit.  Jack's smile, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, a possible suspicion of a dimple Daniel was loathe to give up on, even the way the muscles in Jack's arms moved when he stroked Daniel's back.

The tension seeped from Daniel's body almost despite himself.  He forgot the issue of sex, allowed himself to get completely caught up in Jack.  Soaked him in, skin on skin.  Experienced, enjoyed every reaction of his body to Jack's and Jack's to his.  Encouraged, he explored skin and sensation with lips, tongue and fingers.  With every positive response he drew from Jack, his confidence grew.  Gave way to arousal, excitement.

He was trembling, more than ready when Jack finally rolled him onto his back, his eyes brilliant.  Daniel opened his legs, drew them up either side of Jack, eager hands reaching for his ass, digging into the bunching muscle as he pushed slowly in to bury himself in Daniel's body.

Daniel let out a shuddering gasp as Jack slid slowly home, his vulnerability to being touched so deeply extraordinary.  He wanted to kiss, feel again the closeness he craved and Jack was willing to be still, give every reassurance while Daniel slowly opened up to the hold he had on Jack. 

His tenacious, open-hearted affection, Daniel lavished on Jack with passionate, restless gentleness, kissing, touching, holding.  It was as if he felt almost too much.

When Jack at last began to move, Daniel's hands were quick to find his hips, at first to simply know and then to guide the pace.  A deep, lunging thrust and slow withdrawal made him moan and then bite his lip to stifle his pleasure. 

It was punishing for Jack but drove them both crazy.  As much as his back and thighs ached, he thought he might come every time he thrust so hard and fast into Daniel, only to teeter at the very edge of his control as he slid slowly clear of him.

Maddening, deliberate torture of his driving cock, keeping them both on the brink of orgasm, making Daniel writhe until he could hardly kiss Jack for the feel of it. 

When they were all sweat, aching muscle, breathlessness and heat, Daniel suddenly stared full into Jack's eyes, the slow-dawning faith and certainty in his own blinding.  He put up his hand to cup Jack's cheek tenderly as he lost it completely, clenched down hard and finished them both.  

Daniel held on to Jack, kissing him insistently as their breathing evened out, pounding hearts slowed, muscle tremors faded.  He held on as they eased apart, turning with Jack until they lay facing one another, close and growing comfortable, their bodies touching, tired hands smoothing hot skin.  Feeling fine.

"Better?" Jack asked softly.  He would keep asking until he started hearing the answer he needed.

"Better."

"You know, when you told me I'd have to talk you back into bed, I thought you'd make me work harder for it than this," Jack hinted.

"Maturity doesn't always suck."

"So I should refrain from telling my really dirty joke about sucking and consider this as positive reinforcement?"

"Positive...something."  Daniel quirked a whimsical smile.  "Sports, sex, supper with the neighbours, socialising with the staff from work..."

"Socialising?"  This was the first Jack had heard.

"Every month at a different eatery, the curators and their partners."

"Partners?"

"Plus kids."  Daniel got a rueful twinkle.  "Grandkids."

"Partners?"

"You were loud and proud about it when you were trying to get me into bed."

"You weren't."

"It's what I thought would happen," Daniel confided.  "That we'd acclimate.  In time, in so many small steps we'd hardly see them.  Until our focus was here and this..."  He gestured at the narrow, monochrome apartment, "Was our life."

"And when you add this into the mix?  Us?" Jack enquired, curling his fingers in warm satisfaction over the strong line of Daniel's thigh.

"You can't be the man you were.  I can't be the man I...wanted to be."

Jack was wise enough to keep his yap shut on this one.  He'd struck too much of a nerve already where Sha'uri was concerned.

"What you told me about yourself -- about  _us_  -- hit hard," Daniel told him.

It was meant to.

"We couldn't have this at home," Daniel accepted with poignant resignation.  "Not the men we were, not any place in the lives we were meant to lead.  There were ties binding us both."

"All those ties were cut," Jack jumped in, relief getting the better of maturity.  "We can't eat our hearts out over what we can't fix."

"Is this going to be enough for you?"

Jack heard the unspoken question clearly in Daniel's uncertainty.  Was  _he_  enough for Jack?  His own harshest critic, Daniel sincerely doubted it.

"I don't know that the other would have been enough," Jack said matter-of-factly.  "Here or back there, we were never going to have it all.  Not our lives and each other.  I like to think I'm smart enough to get that, if I get nothing else."

"Well, then you're smarter than me," Daniel said ironically.  "I have to let myself off the hook on this one, huh?"  He knew it.  Sha'uri was hardly further from his grasp here on Shonagon than she had been back home.  She was only further from his thoughts -- and his heart.  Like Jack, he had to let go.

"I could go for that tent," Jack whispered coaxingly, closing in to nibble on Daniel's exceedingly sensitive throat.  "I could really go for getting down and dirty with you in the jungle."

"Why do I not think that metaphor has anything to do with digging?" Daniel sighed.

"You're smarter than you know," Jack grinned.  "Smart enough I don't have to tell you that you'd never be happy walking down those well-worn history trails all your life.  Better we should get off our asses and go find the Ancients.  If it's not exactly having it all, it sure beats the shit out of flying freight and partying with seniors in the mall."

"We're going to succeed where every Shon historian has failed?" Daniel failed to disguise how strongly drawn he was to this prospect, despite his intention to only make mature, sensible decisions that depressed them both.

"Why not?" Jack asked cheerfully.  "We've pulled it off every other time.  Jesus, Daniel, who else but us could've sprung a hundred-thousand year old Ancient trap a trillion light years from home?  Isn't that just our luck all over?"

"You _do_  have the Ancient gene in abundance," Daniel mused, taking their luck as read.  "That does give me a significant advantage previous expedition leaders lacked."

"Leader?" Jack queried discontentedly.  "You?"

Daniel nodded distractedly.  This was not in question.

"Which makes me...what? Your seeing eye dog?  Some sort of Ancient metal detector?"  Fortunately, for a man whose uniform no longer fit, there were other more palatable alternatives.  "Sexual plaything?"

"I'd like that,  Jack!" Daniel beamed, his eyes glowing.

"Me too!" Jack seconded enthusiastically.

"I'd like to look for the Ancients with you."

"It's more our speed," Jack agreed a tad less enthusiastically.

"Yes?" Daniel searched his face hopefully, trying not to want this too much until he was sure he could.

"You think I can't feel these walls closing in around us?" Jack responded briskly.  "I want to be someplace I can breathe, Daniel.  Soon."

"For every time I tell myself it's not so bad here, not so small as it feels, I want that as badly as you do," Daniel confessed, looking relieved to admit to pessimism at last.  His stoicism had been wearing on him.  "Someplace...closer to myself," he explained bashfully.

"Closer to me too," Jack prompted with a grin, getting the expected rise out of Daniel, who silenced him with a snippy kiss and then snuggled into him with bone-melting, astonished contentment.

Jack was...touched.  

Okay, he was choked up. 

But otherwise  _not_  making a big deal of finding out he was at least as important to Daniel as some distant Ancient doodad.  When he was naked, anyway.

Ah, who was he kidding?  He was about as astonished as Daniel they were both still in the bed instead of parked in front of the Portal checking out dig sites.

This was love.

"I want to do this," Daniel smiled, trusting Jack with his emotional honesty.  "I need to do this."

They didn't fit Shonagon, but Jack thought it could be made to fit them.  It would take work and time, and maybe even friends, to get them where they wanted to be.  They would make it.  He had no doubt.  It was the first fight here they could win.  Daniel had been beating the system -- and the odds -- all his life.

Their life might not be the one they'd chosen, but it would be the one they built.

Daniel nuzzled a drowsy kiss into Jack's willing mouth.  "Just so long as you're with me," he murmured.

 

 

As clear early light stole across the apartment floor, Daniel sipped his fragrant tea and missed coffee.

Sleepy and smiling, Jack ambled over to steal first a kiss and then his tea.  Daniel placidly picked up the second cup he'd poured and swung his legs up onto the couch to burrow his cold toes under Jack's thigh.  Jack put out a lazy hand to rest on Daniel's legs and gulped down tea.

They drank their hot pick-me-up beverage and watched the sun come up in an easy, companionable silence Daniel was grateful they hadn't lost.

"Want to come back to bed?" Jack invited.

"We have work."

"We do," Jack acknowledged with dignity.  "Want to come back to bed?"

"Want to take a trip with me?" Daniel countered.

"A trip?" Jack's natural inclination to applaud playing hooky was beat out by his finely honed survival instinct.  "You've been thinking again," he said accusingly.

"I have," Daniel agreed pleasantly.

"Trying to sneak something mature past me?" Jack asked suspiciously.

"Sneak isn't the word I'd have used."

Jack's face fell.  "Can't we just go back to bed?" he whined.

"After the trip."  Daniel hesitated, then chose to share a personal observation.  "I like when you do that."

"What?"

"That...that pouting thing."

Jack had no response to offer at this time.

"I want to go to the World Below," Daniel requested, now he had Jack's full if thwarted attention.  "Take one of those well-worn history trails."

"Where?"

"Guide Zinat's palace, that den of iniquity and slothful ease.  The place we were found when the device brought us here."

"Are we talking quest for closure?" Jack looked depressed at this waste of a perfectly good AWOL.

"On some level, I guess," Daniel shrugged, not embarrassed to be obvious one time.  "But it's also about our plans for Oshnar and those other things we talked about yesterday.  I've done all this reading, but the history of Shonagon -- it's hardly real to me.  It only exists for me in the pages of those books or packaged through the Portal.  How am I supposed to have confidence in my judgement of that?  Is my reasoning about Oshnar sound or am I just so desperate to get out of here and back to something approximating my life I'd jump at any half-baked fairy tale?"

"That's a rhetorical question, right?" Jack queried plaintively.  "Because I'm telling you straight, if we are stuck in this place, I'm getting a dog."

"You can appreciate I'll be taking on the entire academic establishment?"

"I can appreciate you want to be sure of your ground before you fire off the first volley against the system, but I fail to see how touring around the Guide's palace factors in to that."

"I want to test what I've learned, what I've surmised, against what I can see.  When Afarin and the healer led us through the palace that first day, I could scarcely take it in.  I had no context for what I was seeing, so it had no meaning, no significance  for me.  Those were only things, objects, not history," Daniel argued passionately.  "I want to see it again, Jack.  I want to take this full circle, see what I've learned."

"This is sounding less and less appealing."

"We can pitch a tent after.  Take a test run at that rumble in the jungle you were so keen on last night."

"If I'm good and co-operative, can I get a puppy?"

"How about you get to engage the autopilot on the flight back to Nadereh?"

"Deal."  Jack looked sage. "You see how easy that was?  How well bartering sexual favours worked for you?"

"I'll keep it in mind."

Daniel slid off the couch and out of reach before he made Jack his final offer. 

"I have no objection to a cat."

 

 

"Okay, okay!  On reflection, I'll admit it isn't necessarily a  _terrible_  idea to take a puppy into the jungle," Daniel gave ground gracefully in the faint, despairing hope of finally putting the cats .v. dogs debate to bed as the transport touched down in Zinat's park. 

"Now you're seeing sense," Jack huffed as their restraints retracted.

"We want something fat and not too fast on its feet," Daniel suggested thoughtfully as he got in line with the other passengers.  "Something the predators can snack on while we make a run for it."

Jack was shocked  _speechless_  at his callous insensitivity.

Thank God.

"When you're right, you're right, Jack.  A cat would probably just beat us out of there.  As you so justly pointed out to me several  _hours_  ago, they're agile little buggers."

Unlike Jack, who managed to tread heavily on both of Daniel's feet and kick his ankle as they exited the transport.

"You are  _really_  gonna get it tonight, buddy," Jack threatened big time, making Daniel carry their new inflatable two-person temporary dwelling -- the economy model -- and the pack with the provisions.

"Yes?" Daniel queried, frankly curious about what it was he would be getting in the context of this latest bizarre twist in their friendship. 

He was not yet sanguine about having sexual relations with Jack, irrespective of who got whose motor running.  In fact, he was quite startled to find his motor idling nicely when Jack marched off to the welcome desk to ask about campsites in the park lands.  He stared at Jack in mild astonishment all the way through the fact-finding mission and then he stared at him all the way back again.

"What?" Jack demanded suspiciously, trying to peer around at his own backside, in case there was something on him.  Like a joke.

"Sorry," Daniel apologised vaguely, feeling as unbalanced as his two-man inflatable load, something he was trying hard not to think of as any kind of metaphor.  "I was checking out your ass.  That never happened to me before."

Distinctly pleased by this, Jack accepted Daniel's sexual consternation as his modest due, but still let him carry everything through the park.  "What are the odds of you letting me set up camp before we check out the palace?" he enquired good-humouredly.

"Approximately zero.  I'm frightened what else you'll want to check out once we get the tent up."

"Ah, you'll love it when we get going," Jack reminded him with supreme confidence and a hot, stripping sort of a look that should've steamed up Daniel's glasses.

"That's why I'm frightened," Daniel admitted naively.

"Sweet," Jack said softly, smiling at him.

The heat and light were there in Jack's eyes whenever Daniel cared to look at him.  As much as the love, there was a confidence.  What Jack wanted, what Jack felt, Daniel was reflecting back at him.

"It feels good," Daniel realised bashfully, moving closer to Jack.

"When you get down to embracing your fear later, it'll feel even better," Jack leered, patting the inflatable dwelling fondly.  This economy model was his choice.  It was, in totality, a big bouncy bed with a waterproof roof.  Jack was enchanted.  He thought it was _made_  for them to go camp.

The economy model also came with a helpful high-tech aid to maintaining the optimal in-tent sleeping environment irrespective of weather conditions on the World Below.  This meant that as well as being bouncy, the bed changed colour in response to their body heat.

Daniel was not arguing camp.

He could see Guide Zinat's palace was just a big fat let-down from where Jack was fantasising.  So much so, he had to stifle the urge to offer to make it up to him later.

This was...confusing.  He didn’t talk to Jack like that.  He'd  _never_  talked to Jack like that. He didn't want to start because they were going to bed together.

"You've screwed with my perceptions, my behaviour, my resolve, my -- my  _feelings,_ and even my body," he declared to Jack, getting tough on him.  "But when you start screwing with my vocabulary, you're crossing the line!"

Jack took this well, even the part where Daniel poked him really quite hard in the chest.  Then he kissed him, very, very nicely.  Compellingly, even.

"Just so long as we're clear," Daniel murmured, applying himself strenuously to containing a warm, exceedingly mobile mouth.  Jack got everywhere if you didn't watch him and he would push back Daniel's hair and hit this one, betraying spot on his neck and feast -- oh -- there -- oh, God, right there!

When Jack eventually put him down, even Daniel's enthusiasm for history was dampened.

"Could not be clearer," Jack promised solemnly.  Scout's honour.  "Only..." 

With Jack, there was always an 'only.'

"Try to look at this from my perspective," he urged Daniel, giving him a scoot towards the palace.  "Am I taking advantage?  You bet.  But what you have to remember is this: I may love you, but I'm still me.  And..."  He went for his big finish.  "You.  Love.  Me."

"That almost makes sense," Daniel conceded.  "If I'm following your meaning, this kind of amorous incursion is my fault and I'm asking for it.  Or rather, you.  The fact you would try to get me to shoulder the blame for your bad behaviour gives me some hope this might work out for us.  It is what you do.  Calling you on it is what I do.  So, even if we're, you know, together, we can both still do what we need to do."

"That's much less clear but I can live with it so long as we get to have sex again at the end of it," Jack said decidedly.

"I think we do."

Jack looked at the gorgeous palace as if he wanted to kick its exquisite tile.  "I could only wish this wasn't what you do."

"It's such a pain in the ass when you get caught out by your own logic, isn't it?" Daniel commiserated.  "If only you didn't..."  He went for his own big finish.  "Love.  Me.  Too."

"I love you despite who you are," Jack said defensively, attempting a last-ditch recovery of some credibility.  "Not for who you are."

"Me too," Daniel said cheerfully, bounding into the palace with Jack grumbling at his heels. 

The nice man behind the information desk told them where they could store their belongings, freshen up and get a cooling drink or snack.  He told Daniel how to access their excellent interactive Portal-led tour of the palace and confirmed that yes, it really was a gift shop over there.  Daniel took it harder than he should.

"Will you knock it off?" Jack grouched as Daniel slunk away from the nice man at the information desk.  "You look like I kicked your kitten.   This is no different than back home and you know it.  You got your picture taken parked up on top of a camel out front of the pyramids the Goa'uld built, so lighten up, okay?  At least they're not charging admission here."  He was building up a bit of a head of steam.  "If you have to be stranded clear across the universe, you want it to be someplace they have toilet paper, that's all I'm saying.  And don't tell me the Nox don't have no freakin' toilet paper.  The Nox are so advanced they probably don't have asses."

"Better?" Daniel enquired, after a brief, respectful silence.

"I'm just telling it like it is."

"Toilet paper?"

"That was a metaphor."

"Oh.  Right."  Daniel scuffed a melancholy foot.  "For a minute there, I thought you were holding out on me."  He was not a big fan of the, er, biodegradable butt.

"Things are rough all over," Jack unconsciously echoed him.

"That's a bonus of our quest for the Ancients I hadn't considered," Daniel realised, brightening up enough to make a clean break from the foyer and trot up the broad, shallow stairs into the palace proper.

"What kind of a bonus?"

"A jungle means trees.  Trees mean?" he hinted.

Jack smiled a slow, beatific smile.  "Trees mean leaves."

"Big, soft, shiny leaves.  And lots of them."

"Damn!" Jack sighed gustily, his eyes glowing.  "Are we there yet?"

"We haven't fully committed to being here yet."

"What's the hold up?"

"You keep distracting me with all this  _sex_ ," Daniel replied without thinking.

Vastly pleased by this disastrously flattering admission, Jack swaggered.  Just a little.

Okay, quite a lot.

"I don't know why you keep bleating on about your so-called inability to make a relationship work," he informed Daniel happily.  "You're doing great!"

That was one point of view.

Daniel went to look at the palace.  He looked at intricate mosaics, early precursors of the modern architectural detailing they saw everywhere in the World Above.  He looked at sculptures in stone and rich, polished woods and ever more elaborate furniture.  He looked at glorious silken tapestries, vibrant ceramics.

Jack stood up to this boredom pretty well until Daniel went back to look at some of these things again, and then he demanded to know what it was they were meant to be looking at.

"This."  Daniel hunkered down to get Jack to pay closer attention to the decorative lower edge of a tapestry.  "What do you see?" he asked.

"I'm guessing elephants is too obvious an answer?"

"Not up there.  Here."

"There?"

"Right there."

"Looks like the skinny, spiky writing you found in Ernest's pad and again in that place where I got my noggin vacuumed by the Ancient thingumie."

"Would it surprise you to learn it was under the reign of our old friend Guide Zinat that Oshnar was systematically surveyed and mapped?"

"She was the one who built the other Ancient thingumie that sucked us through space?"

"Built?  I wonder."  Daniel stood up thoughtfully.  "Going back to the elephants..."

"You think the six legs -- and both sets of tusks -- are artistic licence?"

"I think this palace was built and furnished by the first rape of Oshnar.  I think Guide Zinat was responsible for the earliest commercial plunder of its resources.  I also think her sudden burning interest in those long-forgotten Ancestors had nothing to do with reverence for the past and everything to do with profiting in the future."

"You think she found something?" Jack deduced intelligently.

"I do."

"Is there anything I can do to stop you explaining it to me?"

"If I asked you what kind of a device could pick up a person on one planet, transport them vast distances through space and then put them down on another planet almost instantaneously, what would you say?"

"Carter!"

"Try Stargate."

"That too."

"At least some kind of early prototype for a Stargate.  Don't you think?" he asked hopefully.

"I think I'm going to need a chair," Jack responded cynically, plumping his butt down on the nearest exhibit.

Daniel gasped.

"If I had a dog, I would've got it to pee on this," Jack taunted.  "Now, get to the part where you bounce around like a pneumatic Tigger."

"I was only going to say I'd looked at the evidence and it struck me Zinat's reign was something of a watershed in Shonagon's history," Daniel said haughtily, hunching an offended shoulder.  "Advances were made in industry, commerce and technology.  Not huge advances, nothing earth-shattering, at least not at the time.  But those advances continued after Zinat's reign, they were built on, expanded.  It struck a chord with me.  It should strike the same chord with you."

"Let's not dwell on striking in the circumstances," Jack advised.

"Look at the Stargate programme, Jack," Daniel argued patiently.  "Look how long it took us to figure out what the Stargate was, how long to build an interface between its technology and ours, how long to complete the dialling sequence and finally get the gate to work.  Look at the alien devices we've found, the difficulties we've had in reverse engineering and practical applications.  All this power, these potentially huge, explosive advances..."

"Sometimes literally," Jack joked.

"And we can only take these small, slow steps.  We're crippled by our technology, our science and capabilities, not those we find through the Stargate."

"Just like Zinat was?" Jack hazarded, sensing something was expected of him.

"Exactly."

"So," Jack obediently speculated.  "They started ripping out all the goodies from Oshnar, found a treasure trove of Ancient thingumies and doodads and got busy trying to make it all go."

"The reason they wanted to catch themselves a real, live Ancient was?"

"Ah!  They couldn't make it all go!"

"Zinat was on the throne of Shonagon millennia before the Goa'uld found Earth and our physiology is only now advancing to the point we can access this Ancient technology."

Jack blithely took this as a compliment.

"You think it's reasonable to conclude the Shon exploited what they were physically able to activate and operate while preserving the rest in secrecy?"

"There's a reason we don't have the gateroom on the NORAD tour itinerary and it's not only because the little guy who does the dialling can't crack a joke to save his life."

"I think Oshnar's natural and mineral resources became the real treasure trove.  In the generations that followed, it fuelled the first great ages of industry.  What was secret in Zinat's reign may have been forgotten over time."

"If you can't use it, junk it?"

"The Shon found their own technological path." 

Daniel wasn't precisely running out of steam, but he did take a seat on the charming, in-character viewing bench so thoughtfully provided for visitors to enjoy the tapestry and other decorative objets in the room.

"The great variable here, the one event no one could have predicted, was the Shon finally realising they were on the road to ruin and cleaning up their act.  Literally.  Whether that Ancient site on Oshnar was forgotten or unusable or not, the fact remains the Shon seeded and nurtured a new rainforest over the entire continent in some noble act of expiation for past sins."

"So, let me get this straight," Jack drawled.  "When you were telling me -- fairly sarcastically, I might add -- we would have to succeed in finding the Ancients where everyone else in the history of the world had failed, what you actually meant was we would have to be the first ones to succeed in finding the Ancients since the last ones found them.  With the slight added difficulty that now the Ancients aren't where the last ones left them back then."

Daniel crossed his arms and nodded.

"Do we have  _any_  hope of finding  _anything_  out there?"

"We have hope."

"Daniel..."

"We have you."

Jack put up a sceptical eyebrow.

"We have historical evidence of a lot of places on Oshnar the Ancients couldn't be."

Jack put his hand over his eyes.

"We also have the O'Neill and the ability to aerially survey the significantly reduced number of places the Ancients could be.  You can't hide the signs of construction, Jack.  The land's scars are permanent.  There will be a site down there, one site with signs of construction where there should be none."

"Which my amazing in-built Ancient detector is supposed to detect through all those trees and their lots and lots of big, soft, shiny leaves?"

"I never said it would be easy."

"You never said it would be insane either!"  Jack came up scowling.  "It's an insane amount of work.  It could take a lifetime.  You realise that, don’t you?"

"You have some place better to be?"

"That's low."

"That's archaeology, Jack," Daniel said very, very gently.  "It takes a lifetime."  He worked up a smile and prayed he didn’t look as naked as he felt.  "Mine."  Prayed Jack saw the hope and wouldn't leave him hanging all alone out here.  "My lifetime."

Jack landed on the bench beside Daniel from some great height and some place far away, grabbed his arms, growled at him, and kissed him.  Then he heaved a sigh and hugged him about as hard as he'd kissed him.

Daniel rubbed his tense back soothingly. 

"Opening the Stargate took Catherine's whole lifetime.  Learning to comprehend the basis of the universal language, scratching the surface of the knowledge contained in Heliopolis, recording only fragments, took Ernest's lifetime.  There are far more archaeologists who've worked just as hard and just as long without any certainty of success."

"Are you going to tell me it's about the search?"

"Afraid so."

Jack sat back and fixed big, pleading eyes on him.  "Do I have to respect the search?  Can't I just be shallow about the pot of gold we're supposed to get at the end of it?"

"You don't have to do anything," Daniel said evenly.  "We have options.  Remember?  As I understand it, the trick is to find the option we can both live with.  For the record, I can't be happy with any option that leaves you completely miserable."

"For the record," Jack repeated back at him, "If we do this, I get to fly, I get you happy and putting out, and I even get to wipe my ass as nature intended."

"The amount of work it's going to take to even identify potential Ancient sites, you get to have the puppy too," Daniel grinned, feeling so much lighter he could hardly stand it.  "The Shon have a few breeds that grow big enough to take on just about anything short of those elephants."

Jack was genuinely taken aback.  "How do you know?"

Daniel coughed, that small, annoying obstruction back in his throat again. 

"The first time we went to the market," he explained gruffly, unable to quite look Jack in the eye.  "You were so smitten, I looked into it.  Breeds.  I looked into breeds.  Of dog.  In case...Look, I thought there might be something I could do," he said defensively.  "Sometime. When things weren't so rough for us."

Jack thought about the hours and hours of fun they'd had on the flight to Khousheh, discussing man's best friend, cat versus dog.  The argument he'd  _lost_.

"You'd hate it if I just gave in," Daniel offered, twinkling.

 

 

Daniel's expectations of what getting it good entailed were confounded when Jack cuddled up to him and put a contented head on his bare chest.  Daniel didn't think he'd ever consciously experienced a wish to stroke Jack's hair, but his hands were there now, as if of their own accord.

"Are we okay?" he asked, still uncertain whether he'd been giving Jack a choice or taking that choice away.

"We are great." Jack nuzzled a kiss into Daniel's chest, then slid a possessive hand down to rest over his hip.  "See, the big secret here is all this relationship stuff you think is so mysterious and difficult and beyond you, that's only trust.  Faith and trust."

"Faith and trust?"  Those sounded good to Daniel.  Very good.

"When you tell me you can find the Ancients if I'll get out there and look with you, I trust you on that."

Daniel ruffled Jack's hair, much as Jack had done to him a hundred times before.

"And when I tell you I'll feel pretty good about it all, that's where you trust me."

Daniel wanted to be clear on this.  "I trust you want what I want you to want?"

"You've got this couple stuff down cold," Jack snickered, a pleasant, whiskery tickle against Daniel's skin.  "Trust," he said expansively.  "Some people never have that, Dannyboy, but we always have.  It's why we work." 

Why they worked when Daniel and Sha'uri, when Jack and Sara, had failed? 

"Sha'uri never trusted me," Jack went on, surprising Daniel.  "Not on any level.  But she was only right not to trust me with you.  She didn't trust anything that took you away from her.  Anything.  She loved you but..."  He caressed Daniel's hip.

"She didn't trust me."  Much easier for him to say than to feel, Daniel got it out with scarcely a tremor.

"Sara trusted me and that didn't work out any better," Jack said wryly.

"Oh, that was always about you.  You didn't trust her enough to open up to her.  You've said as much."

"I did?  Must've been drunk."

"No, but I was."

Daniel thought maybe Jack was right.  Maybe trust was the elusive difference he'd never been able to quantify.  A certain quality of honesty and reliance on acceptance, if not always understanding.  Trust was precisely what he and Jack had found together in the first days of their friendship, something instinctual, something beyond the common wisdom that trust was only earned and built.

Jack had loved his wife but been unable to trust her enough to talk to her, to let her share or even see what he was feeling.  Daniel had only scratched his surface, but Jack had talked to him.  It had poured out.

And Daniel, who had loved his wife so very much and had made her work so very hard, had hurt her terribly with the trust he'd offered up so heedlessly to Jack O'Neill.  Overturning all their lives and finally ending them on the promise implicit in a box of tissues.

They had both loved their wives but not unreservedly.  A limit had been imposed on what they would give or take, something their wives had seen and felt more clearly, more honestly than either of them.  Trust was what they'd held back. 

It even took trust to admit to being hurt.

"I gave you options, choices I never gave her," he said thickly.  "I didn't think about doing it for her.  I couldn't not think about doing it for you."

Jack slid up to hold him, be close with him, as if he knew he was what Daniel wanted and needed more than anything. 

Knew he had to be close for Daniel to be whole.

"If the way were to open tomorrow, if we could go home..." Daniel looked at Jack, stroked soft, unsteady fingers over his face, wishing he could touch him more easily, hardly feeling equal to being loved so intensely.  He offered up what he could. "I don't know that I'd take it.  I don't think I could -- I  _couldn't_  give up on us.  Not even for the Stargate."  He should have said this when Jack did, should have been at least that generous, but he could say it now.  He could mean it now.  Jack's burning face and stunned, melting eyes made him stammer on with the right thing, the one thing.   "I won't give up on us." 

He would give  _everything_.

"I'm the same," Jack said roughly, resting his face against Daniel's.  "Just the same.  I don't know why it's you, Daniel.  Only that it is." 

What Jack felt for Daniel was always going to be there in his eyes.  

"Are we...accepting...this?" 

Taking the difficult path, taking on what they feared and had failed at before, working at this small, quiet life so far from everything they knew and had wanted, because they loved.

"We're  _good_  with this."

This was enough for Daniel.  Jack's word.  He heard the promise being made to him and as he always had, he took Jack on faith. 

For life. 

**FINIS**

 


End file.
